13. Solution: Affinity Mapping

Solution: Grocery Store Affinity Mapping

Things to Remember

• It’s an interactive process. Make sure to leverage the group
• Place related sticky notes next to each other in clusters. Label each cluster with a name that represents that category
• Make sure to have an “Other” category. This is helpful if an idea doesn’t fit with other sticky notes. No need to try and force everything to fit into a category.
• Don’t be afraid to move things around. The first categories you come up with probably won’t be your final categories.
• Once all the sticky notes are on the board, check to see if any of the clusters are related. If so group them together as a theme with a label.
• Make sure to take photos, especially at the end with the completed affinity map

Affinity mapping is a method that allows you to take ideas and insights and group them into related categories and themes. This is a great way to take a large amount of information and visually represent it in a way that is much easier to parse and will inform the rest of the sprint.

Affinity Mapping Further Research

• HMW Sharing and Affinity Mapping

• A Beginner's Guide to Affinity Mapping

• Affinity Mapping

• Affinity Map Examples