Affinity Clustering
What is it?
This technique is a simple way to summarise your challenge to the information you need. It helps you to write a compelling and concise statement that communicates to anyone.
Why and when should I use this?
Once you’ve generated lots of ideas with your team or participants, this technique can help you summarise and make sense of them. It’s a useful way to identify key concepts to carry forward into the next stage and start to see components of system emerge.
How much time should I spend on this?
Allow at least 20 minutes. This exercise can be a bit tricky and often sparks discussions. Finding the right titles for your idea clusters might take a few tries. Give your team time to explore and refine the groupings.
Who should I involve in this?
You can do this with the team of people who helped you understand the challenges or your project team if you are doing it outwith a workshop. Involve at least one other person to avoid bias in clustering.
How to use it...
- Start grouping ideas: Bring your team together and start with one post-it and look for a similar idea on your chart. It could help if someone started with one of theirs and asked if anyone came up with something similar.
- Break clusters down: Pretty quickly, you will have large cluster of ideas. If you've got more than 6 or 7 post-its in one cluster, you can probably break it down further.
- Review your clusters: Take a step back to be critical about why ideas are grouped together; are they actually doing the same thing?
- Label your clusters: Pick a different colored post-it note and start naming your clusters. To do this, imagine somebody who knows nothing about your project is standing across the room. Write your cluster so that this person understand what your ideas are about. Use sentences with active verbs rather than one word post-its.
- Draw connections: Connect clusters to explore and indicate how they relate to each other. Clear themes and connections will make it easier to more ideas forward.