The visible clustering of observations and insights into meaningful categories and relationships
• Designers capture research insights, observations, concerns, or requirements on individual sticky notes.
• Rather than grouping notes into predefined categories, specific details are clustered, which then give rise to named category themes based on the shared affinity of similar intent, issues, or problems.
• Making tacit knowledge or information buried in transcripts visible facilitates research synthesis.
• Affinity diagramming from the contextual inquiry is based on interviews and observations of users in the field, synthesizing human stories.
• Affinity diagramming from usability testing documents observations and quotes of participant task performance to determine priority issues to be fixed.
• Color-coded sticky notes can help to efficiently parse information by user, task, or issue.