How to Create an Affinity Diagram for UX Research

Posted on July 19, 2019November 28, 2022 by Zack Naylor

People doing an affinity diagram with sticky notes

What is an Affinity Diagram?

An affinity diagram is a tool often used to organize data and ideas. Affinity diagrams help you organize information into groups of similar items to then analyze qualitative data or observations.

Business and design teams have used affinity diagrams for a long time to organize ideas, complex information and even customer feedback into themes or groups. For UX researchers, affinity diagrams are often used for analyzing and synthesizing user research findings by patterns and themes. In this case affinity diagrams are sometimes referred to as the KJ method or an affinity map. Also in other broad application like business brainstorming or idea generation it may be called a cluster map.

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 36 with Natalie Hanson on Sharing and Communicating User Research

Posted on April 5, 2019September 19, 2019 by Zack Naylor

Tags Podcast, Research Ops, User Research

Episode 36 highlights with Natalie Hanson on Sharing and Communicating User Research:

Differences between in house and external UX teams and the unique challenges of each
Tips for collaborating with others on your user research work
How to encourage non-designers and non-researchers to collaborate on user research and insights
Tips for working with stakeholders who believe they already know what needs to be designed
Effectively communicating user research insights to inspire action from executives, developers and more

Organize and Share Your User Research with a Central Repository

Posted on November 19, 2018November 20, 2020 by Zack Naylor

Tags Key Insights, Research Ops, Researchops, User Research, User Research Repository, Ux Nuggets, Ux Research

Create Company Wide Empathy with a User Research Repository

Creating insights to share and act on is the most important work you do as a UX or user research professional.

Your research must create a sense of empathy for the people you’re designing for with your team and company. This means your insights and findings must be clear, findable and actionable.

With rapidly changing expectations and methods for communication and sharing knowledge, it’s critical to start building a sustainable research practice right away that builds institutional knowledge of your customers.

Doing so generates better intuition and decision making, as well as wide spread empathy at your organization.

Investing in a user research repository to organize, search and share everything you learn from customer research early helps you accomplish these things and build true customer empathy in your organization.

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 32 with Gregg Bernstein on User Research and Strategic Impact

Posted on October 31, 2018September 19, 2019 by Zack Naylor

Tags Podcast, Research Ops, Researchops, User Research, Ux Research

Gregg Bernstein On User Research – Aurelius Podcast Episode 32 Highlights:

How Gregg and his team are doing user research at Vox Media
Doing user research for broad audiences and industries
Using smaller research projects to lead to larger more strategic research
How to most effectively share your user research findings with stakeholders and your team
Thoughts on UX research repositories and libraries
Tools and tips for setting up your ResearchOps and process for taking in, conducting and sharing user research at your company
Making user research more strategic to influence company focus and direction
Avoiding the pitfalls of overthinking in the user research process

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 31 with Hana Nagel on Building Confidence Through User Research in Your Organization

Posted on October 11, 2018September 19, 2019 by Zack Naylor

Tags Enterprise Ux, Podcast, Research Ops, Researchops, User Research, Ux, Ux Research

Episode 31 highlights with Hana Nagel:

How the President of the United States did “user research” and what you can learn from that in your work as a UX designer, researcher and product maker
Doing user research…about user research, so that you can see much more success with your organization adopting a more user centered mindset
Focusing on the outcomes of research to create a greater impact with user research at your company
Learning the behavior of your teams and company in order to sell user research internally
How to empower other teams to do user research themselves in order to scale user research at your company
How to turn user research and findings into action and recommendations
Giving your team and company confidence in doing the right things

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 30 with Dave Malouf on DesignOps and ResearchOps

Posted on September 18, 2018September 19, 2019 by Zack Naylor

Tags Design Ops, Designops, Podcast, Research Ops, Researchops, User Research

Episode 30 highlights with Dave Malouf:

What is ResearchOps and DesignOps?
Challenges of operationalizing research and design in growing organizations and how to overcome them
Dave’s tips and insights in how to grow design and research in your company more efficiently
Who owns “ResearchOps” and what does that person(s) do?
How to determine when you should be thinking about DesignOps and ResearchOps

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 27 with Brianna Sylver on the Differences Between Market Research and User Research

Posted on August 7, 2018September 19, 2019 by Zack Naylor

Tags Market Research, Podcast, User Research

Listen to Episode 27 for highlights with Brianna Sylver including:

The difference between user research and market research
Using both market research and user research to build a better design strategy
Why market research may not be what you think it is
How and when you should think about doing user research more like a market researcher
Project mindset vs. product mindset
Tactical vs. strategic UX design

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 25 with Michelle Fitzpatrick on Product Management and User Research at Intercom

Posted on July 10, 2018September 19, 2019 by Zack Naylor

Tags Podcast, Product Management, User Research, Ux

Episode 25 highlights:

Product management at Intercom
Choosing the right problems to solve for your customers
What user research looks like at Intercom
How Michelle and the product team at Intercom chooses which projects to work on
Where does UX design start and Product Management end?

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 23 with Lindsey Redinger on User Research and ResearchOps

Posted on June 5, 2018September 19, 2019 by Zack Naylor

Tags Podcast, Research Ops, User Research

Episode 23 Highlights:

What is ResearchOps and how do you operationalize user research?
Making research accessible to everyone in the organization
How InVision documents and stores user research insights
Lindsey’s trick for helping all of InVision build empathy with their customers
Getting new employees at InVision up to speed with who their customers are as part of their new hire onboarding
How to get started in your ResearchOps practice or operationalizing user research and your company
Keeping individual projects aligned to broader company goals
How Lindsey and InVision uses the Jobs To Be Done framework to keep user research focused

Aurelius Podcast: Episode 22 with Peter Morville on Planning, User Research and Mindfulness

Posted on May 15, 2018September 19, 2019 by Zack Naylor

Tags Podcast, Product Management, Product Planning, User Research

Episode 22 highlights with Peter Morville:

Peter’s new book “Planning for Everything” and what led him to decide to write a book about planning
What we can learn from the U.S. Marines about planning better design and research projects
Peter’s framework of S.T.A.R.F.I.N.D.E.R and how to use it for better planning of your ux, design and research projects
How Agile development process can help…and hinder your design and software project planning
Are you OVER-planning? How to determine if you are and if so work at getting better at improvising
Tips for convincing your stakeholders to do (or do more) user research
Systems thinking and how it applies to UX design and product management
Ways to be more self-aware in the design, features and decisions we make in our work as UX designers, researchers and product managers