Write each idea on its own piece of paper (like an index card or sticky note). Think of many ideas to answer the question. For example, “How could we improve our office culture?”, “How are our clients’ needs changing?”, or “Where should we go on vacation?” Brainstorm Identify a question that has many possible answers. The affinity mapping stepsĪffinity mapping is a powerful tool because it is a structured and efficient way to make sense of a lot of ideas. The goal is to go from a lot of individual ideas (a big mixed-up bag of beads) to a few categories of ideas (groups of similar beads) that provide answers to the question or topic. It involves gathering or creating ideas on a topic or question, writing each idea on a card, moving ideas into categories, and naming those categories. The process of affinity mapping makes this natural pattern of thinking explicit and tangible – especially in group settings.
#Affinity mapping how to#
How will you begin? Many of us would dump the bag onto the table, look at the options, sort the beads to see what we have to work with, and then decide how to string them. You have a big mixed-up bag of beads to use. Affinity mapping is a fancy term for categorizing and it’s a process that our brains do naturally all the time. It is useful when you have a lot of ideas that you need to make sense of.
#Affinity mapping download#
Click on the images you can download the templates and use instantly.Articles, Leadership Development Affinity Mappingīy Al Onkka | ApWhat is affinity mapping?Īffinity mapping is a simple and important tool for facilitative leadership. The templates are fully editable so that you can change the color, size, and layout to fit your own needs. An affinity diagram is a valuable prioritizing tool under Six Sigma method.īelow are affinity diagram templates you can download and use. The results of affinity diagram in prioritizing ideas absolutely rely on sourcing ideas and integrating them into an affinity diagram in a logical order. Although you have already finished the affinity diagram to some extent, you still need to set priorities for them by analyzing three main important and urgent groups, voting for the most important group, and ranking main focuses with labels to highlight. The last step of designing an affinity diagram is to analyze and prioritize groups of ideas. Combine groups into supergroup with a corresponding subjectĪs each category or group has its own idea branches, this step is to bring each confirmed category together into a combination and name the whole diagram with a relevant and corresponding subject so as to describe the common theme of that supergroup. After deleting all the repetitive ideas, you should place the rest of ideas into their belonging categories.ĥ. This step is to integrate those ideas put forward in the first stage as many information and ideas might have the same meaning. If categories are fixed, the structure of the diagram is formed.Ĥ. So it is easy to come to this process which you need to refine keywords as categories. When you record ideas, you must have a general overview of what you collect. All these lead to a systematic analysis of the issue. In addition, you should collect ideas from other channels to expand the topic ideas, like searching archives, discussing with your mates, and interview experts etc. Digging your mind deeply will promote exploring mind.Īfter the end of thinking and exploring process, the most significant task comes that you need to list all the ideas but not to mind the order. At that time, exploring the mind and even brainstorming might contribute to abundant ideas. The basic element for prioritizing ideas under affinity diagram is ideas, and whether the ideas are comprehensive or not should be confirmed in advance. How to Prioritize Ideas by Affinity Diagram?
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