A founder’s affinity for Post-its.
Loving l’il sticky notes isn’t required to design a great product. But it doesn’t hurt.
I swear, we don’t own 3M. We just love sticky notes. (Photo by the author)
A few days ago, the co-founder of a staffing startup called and asked me what, on the surface, seems like a simple enough question:
“How do you do that affinity mapping thing you do?”
Oh, sure. Is that all?
If you’re new to the concept or don’t recognize the term, Affinity mapping is a simple way to find patterns in qualitative data. Experience designers often use this activity to make sense of user interviews and survey data, to find patterns that inform personae or user requirements, and to tease out those most differentiators and insights that take a good idea and make it great.
In the case of our friends with the staffing startup, the pair of founders were hoping to use this technique to see how aligned they were regarding the what, how, and why of their nascent enterprise.
For pairs and teams of founders all the way up to large groups of extended stakeholders or board members, affinity mapping is a great tool to generate conversation and elicit insights. And when done thoughtfully and without ego, it’s a powerful technique to identify consensus, requirements, and key performance indicators.
So, for this founder’s immediate need, I recommended affinity mapping in three easy steps:
Get it out. Each founder takes a different colored stack of Post-it notes and writes one discrete thought per note about what their business (or product or event or so on) is going to do, how they’re going to do it, and why they’re doing it or why anyone should care. Write quickly and without self-censorship or judgement.
Sort it. When all the notes are written, organize them by general topic (e.g, notes about process, motivation, pet peeves, financial goals, exits, etc.). We find it’s best to do sort notes on a window or markerboard where you write with dry-erase markers around them and to start each category relatively far apart from one another. Each founder can sort their own notes this way and it doesn’t matter where you start or how you sort them as long as all participants are consistent.
Sort it again. When all the notes are categorized, revisit those categories one at a time as a group and look for the trends therein. Break categories apart or combine them in new ways and construct “we” statements to explain their contents. For instance, if you have a lot of notes about work life balance but only a few about money, you might collect those notes together under “we prioritize balance over wealth.” Pro tip: make sure no “we” statement is informed by only one founder’s color. The goal is to find trends and identify opportunities for alignment—there is no “we” in “monochrome.”
Put it together (Bonus step) When you’re all done, can you turn those we statements into a “pseudo persona” paragraph which describes the personality of your founders in the aggregate?
In our experience, many of these founder-informed “we” statements become meaningful metrics for retrospectives and leadership check ins. And as new partners join or as the product evolves and the market changes, affinity mapping is a simple and repeatable activity to redefine the founder’s aggregate view. It’s also mercifully analog—and we all need more of that.
The startup landscape has changed.
Measurable usability and customer experience are the key differentiators separating good products from exceptional investments. But it’s almost impossible to find business-savvy design consultants who understand the full-product lifecycle—from the needs of a pre-seed startup to the customer- and employee-experience challenges of a game-changing market leader and a lucrative exit.
This is why startup investors, founders, and enterprise intrapreneurs choose Sharpen Partners. Our team of veteran product designers draw on diverse careers in research, technology, architecture, business, and the arts to assemble the perfect team for your new or re-imagined product.
Contact Sharpen for a free remote consultation with our product-design leaders to see how we bring ideas to life and transform them into results.
