Summary: Rapid Contextual Design, Chapter 8, Building an Affinity Diagram

The chapter introduces the process for building an affinity diagram. Affinity diagram building enables the designer “to see the issues for the whole user population, not just one individual” and is “a great opportunity to involve related stakeholders.” Before building an affinity diagram, the designers have to make sure that they have completed half of their interviews and have taken enough notes. In all, to build an affinity diagram, the designers need four types of Post-it notes:

First, yellow notes. The yellow notes come from the interpretation session. The first step for building an affinity diagram is to group the yellow notes into columns and post them on a wall.

Second, blue labels. The blue labels describe the content of each group of yellow notes. This labeling process usually starts with the longest columns, because “long columns may bury requirements.” A good blue label should fulfill two requirements: first, the designers do not need to read the yellow notes to understand its meaning; second, it should be able to drive design thinking.

Third, pink labels. The pink labels are used to group “a set of blue labels with a common theme.” “Good pink labels should reveal key issues in the data.” A pink label should contain two to six blue labels.

Fourth, green labels. The green labels are used to “chunk the wall.” Each green label should tell “a coherent piece of story that is important to the project focus,” which should contain four to eight pink labels.

After the preliminary affinity wall is built, collect more data and “walk the wall.” Revise the affinity diagram during this “walking” process.