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TOOL · AFFINITY MAP

Affinity Map

Turn a pile of research notes into a few clear insights. Add one observation per note, drag similar notes together, name each group with what you learned, then dot-vote the groups that matter most. Work solo, or open a team board for groups of 4–5 (up to 30 people on one board).

Also called the KJ method, after its inventor, Japanese anthropologist Jiro Kawakita. Steps follow Nielsen Norman Group. Where it comes from

Research question: what were you trying to learn?

STEP 1 · 2 MIN

Ask

Write the question your research set out to answer, at the top of the board.

STEP 2 · 10 MIN

Dump

Everyone adds notes silently. One quote, fact or observation per note. Paste a list if you have interview notes.

STEP 3 · 10 MIN

Sort

Drag notes next to similar ones, still without talking. You can move anyone's note. Start a new group whenever nothing fits.

STEP 4 · 8 MIN

Name

Give each group a name that says what you learned, as a sentence: “I plan my day around train timings”, not “Timing”.

STEP 5 · 5 MIN

Vote

Each person gets three dots for the groups that matter most. Turn the top groups into How Might We questions.

Where affinity mapping comes from

Affinity mapping is also called the KJ method, after its inventor, the Japanese anthropologist and ethnographer Jiro Kawakita. The name uses his initials, K. J., with the family name first, as in Japanese.

The inventor. Kawakita developed the technique in the 1960s while doing field research in Nepal.
The problem. He had a huge, messy pile of qualitative field notes and observations, and standard top-down, deductive Western methods couldn't make sense of them.
The solution. He worked bottom-up: notes are grouped by their natural “affinity”, meaning how closely related they are, before any labels or categories are put on them. Groups are named only after they have formed.

Because notes cluster by how similar they are, the practice became widely known as the affinity diagram or affinity mapping. It's one of the seven management and planning tools in quality management, and a standard step in UX research and design sprints, where teams use it to sort interview notes, observations and How Might We notes.

The steps on this page follow how Nielsen Norman Group describes affinity diagramming for UX teams (Rachel Krause and Kara Pernice, 2024): write ideas on notes on your own first, cluster and label them together, then prioritise the clusters with dot voting and agree on next steps.

Sources: Nielsen Norman Group · ASQ, Affinity diagram · BYU Design Review · StoryFlow · Velonova

The board, dot vote, group check and A4 sheet on this page are made by Invent + Discover. Solo boards stay in your browser and are never uploaded. Team boards are stored on Google Firebase so teammates can see each other's notes; anyone with the team code can view and edit that board, so don't put names or anything private on it.