Affinity Mapping for UX

Introduction affinity diagram

Affinity diagrams are a common UX strategy that brings the whole team together via a brainstorming session. Team members use sticky notes to organize research, user pain points, and qualitative data. Ideas can then be sorted into logical groups, allowing connections to be drawn.

It's a collaborative and creative exercise. The primary purpose is to gather insights and ideas into one place. A secondary goal is to understand our assumptions and whether they need validation. This helps identify areas for further investigation.

Your team should sort ideas by moving sticky notes into the relevant top-level categories to reach a group consensus. At UX Cambridge, we will use our project of redesigning a streaming platform to give you an example of the process. This allows users to follow and gain a better understanding of the affinity map and the other phases that a UX design team follow to complete a project.

This blog post will cover how to create an affinity diagram, what it entails, and the benefits.

What is the KJ method?

The affinity diagram is also known as the k J Method and J K Technique, named after its inventor Jiro Kawatika. It allows you to document research findings, enabling your business to prioritize data and generate ideas. This technique is among the most popular brainstorming exercise for design teams, retrospectives and project meetings.

Using digital tools like Figma, Miro, and Mural undoubtedly helps facilitate collaboration. Researching an alternative to Netflix, we gathered information and used Figma to identify patterns and understand user frustrations.

Our team will collaboratively organize our collected information to observe and highlight our assumptions and ideas on the current streaming interfaces. It is an integral part of our design process, allowing us to consider what to include when designing our streaming software. It helps to identify improvement areas in the current user journey.

Adding research insights to affinity diagrams

After conducting thorough research, team members work collaboratively on the affinity mapping process.

With our project of redesigning a streaming platform, for example, our team first carried out competitor benchmarking, deep diving into the existing streaming world. We added research insights to the affinity map allowing every participant to understand the competitor's context and identify strengths and weaknesses.

You should add insights from user interviews and user testing as a team. It is a great way to visualize these results and draw connections. As streaming services have a massive subscription base, we used Trustpilot to seek competitor reviews and user feedback related to UX issues. We suggest grouping the data points into common themes like frustrations and user goals. 

Use a different sticky note for each finding. Affinity mapping should include data, as it helps pitch an idea. The process allows you to make informed decisions on research results rather than assumptions.

A team member can also investigate categorization and information architecture. IA is added to the affinity diagram to help understand the user journey.

When creating affinity diagrams, allocating different colours to represent insights or sources is crucial.

How affinity mapping helps

The affinity diagram visually represents users' paint points, research and assumptions. Therefore grouping similarities. It's important to note that it must be based on facts. Otherwise, it's just hypothetical.

There are plenty of benefits why a design team, groups, and businesses should use an affinity map to organize findings and data. UX Cambridge highlights four core benefits of the affinity diagramming process:

Benefit one: problem-solving

An affinity diagram helps solve complex issues, and team members generate ideas and add research findings to the table via sticky notes.

Benefit two: organize ideas

Just like traditional brainstorming, to create an affinity, it brings in individual ideas and research, allowing the group to come together to identify any common themes that may not have been obvious at first.

Benefit three: collaborative working

Conducting an affinity diagram encourages team members to work collaboratively, boosting morale!

Benefit four: decision making

Affinity maps visually represent the group's best ideas and witness natural patterns among data, allowing them to discuss their next steps in more detail.

How to use sticky notes

Less is more when using post its. Keep them short, sweet and insightful.

When you create your sticky notes, be ruthless. Is this information useful or not? For example, with our streaming service project, we only used sticky notes, which were purposeful. They describe and inform.

An exemplary affinity diagram should avoid adding too many assumptions to sticky notes. But if you do, make sure you have two groups of colour coding to identify whether it is fiction and not fact.

When thinking of your affinity diagram template, it is a good idea at the start to keep all the insights from one source in one colour together. Once you sort notes and are ready to begin grouping, you can start the music and get moving.

Grouping similar ideas

Grouping information is the hardest part of affinity mapping because it requires careful analysis and judgement of diverse perspectives. It can be challenging to place each source within a specific group. Different methods can vary depending on your project. At UX Cambridge, we want to share our top three best practices and tips:

Method for grouping

1. We defined our categories in the streaming service project using the user journey. It is an excellent way of outlining the process while giving our group structure. We opted for this method because of the complexity of the project and its many different use cases.
2. Allow the group to develop categories, bucket information, and themes as they see fit. This strategy works well if the project needs to be more defined. For example, it is challenging if you're trying to discover what to do with no product or service in mind.
3. The group can organize information into different clusters via desired outcomes, scenarios or themes. For example, "I would like to be able to search for a movie quickly". You would then, underneath that column, add all user frustrations that the scenario presents.

Top tips for grouping

1. We recommend fewer categories on the affinity map. Otherwise, it may become overwhelming.
2. Avoid coming up with a general category that isn't specific to any goal. For example, "other information". Often this turns into the dumping ground of the affinity map. If you have some information or ideas that cannot be categorized, we suggest leaving it to the end.
3. Gather information that's quality and not quantity. Every piece of information should be purposeful, adding to the story. If it is not, then hit that delete button. 

Collaborating as a group

Affinity mapping is a great example of what you can achieve whilst working as a group. The affinity diagram process encourages all team members to participate in bringing insights and new ideas to the table. Complete the brainstorming exercise with two or more people.

As well as individuals bringing in their research, it also facilitates an ideation session where each group member can share ideas and bring fresh perspectives. Everyone has a different perspective. The brainstorming exercise will include disciplines such as front-end, back-end, and business analysts with different experiences.

Working collaboratively to organize information allows the group to discuss complex topics, leading to open and improved communication among the team. The group can have open discussions and make informed decisions about the next steps.

Collaborating as a group on affinity diagrams can be done in person and virtually using digital tools like Figma, Miro and Mural. They have the means to facilitate this.

Color coding

Affinity diagrams usually have a vast amount of information and ideas, so it's important to use color coding to achieve an understandable affinity map.

Creating a key and allocating your colours to their related groups will allow the team to run this brainstorming session efficiently.

Each team member will build the affinity chart one sticky note after another in correlation with the key. We created and confirmed our color key with our streaming project before starting.

Most importantly, colour coding on an affinity diagram helps traceability. If you cannot trace the origin of these perspectives, then later down the road, you will find it hard to identify who said what. Labelling every source from the get-go is a better idea, so you can be sure where the information originates. 

Using a separate sticky note within the color code for new ideas and each data point will create an aesthetically pleasing, groups based affinity diagram. It will help team members navigate the organized output, identify emerging themes, and discuss design ideas.

Generate Ideas for affinity mapping

Generating ideas for affinity mapping can be done in various ways. Come together in your groups or business teams for this ideation session. Use a method that works well for you and for the project you are working on. 

At Ux Cambridge, we have five ways to share:

Method one: Brainstorming session

Encourage each individual to speak freely in an open discussion, share as many ideas as they want, and write each idea onto a sticky note. Some of these can then later serve as header cards during affinity mapping.

Method two: Silent idea generation

Give each team member time to generate ideas individually without discussion, writing them anonymously on sticky notes. Independent thinking ensures a diverse perspective. These ideas can all be collected and presented during the group's affinity diagram session.

Method Three: Research and interviews

Explore existing research, case studies and articles related to the topic, as this can provide some valuable perspectives and spark new ideas that get added to the affinity diagram. In addition, you can conduct user interviews before the session or speak with individuals within the business who may have relevant experience and knowledge of the topic. Ask open-ended questions to gather their perspective, suggestions and opinions. You can use thematic analysis to identify and group recurring themes in response to the research data and interviews.

Method four: Mind mapping

Come together to create a mind map related to the topic, starting with a central idea or keyword and branching out with different, similar ideas. The visual representation of a mind map can help spark additional thoughts. Use an affinity diagram template to help cluster the arguments based on common themes to extract later and add to your affinity diagram.

Method five: Creative & alternative idea generation

Encourage participants to think outside the box to help generate new ideas. Think of analogies or metaphors related to the project. Look at competitors, what they post on social media, and how your competitors connect with their users.

Conclusion

To conclude, affinity mapping helps organize UX research into top-level categories. Don’t forget to bring your UX research to sessions and colour-code your findings.

Whilst you conduct affinity mapping, use your qualitative research to help solve complex issues and use data points to help make those informative decisions. Everyone has a voice.

Make sure every team member has a chance to voice their opinion during the affinity mapping process. Sometimes, a significant affinity mapping session can just be investigating a competitor, which is often one of the best places to start.

On a side note, there is no point in having a session if your team members don’t understand the qualitative research. Take the time to ensure each team member is briefed on the user research findings.

Be careful, as an affinity diagram usually contains both facts and assumptions. Make every sticky note count.

Finally, affinity mapping should be fun.

To affinity and beyond! If you need help with affinity mapping, contact info@uxcambridge.co.uk