Affinity Diagram Template

About the Affinity Diagram template

What is an affinity diagram?

We’ve all participated in brainstorming sessions that seemed to go nowhere. When so many people are sharing ideas and perspectives, it can be difficult to distill these conversations into a coherent takeaway. An affinity diagram is a powerful brainstorming tool. It organizes ideas according to their natural relationships to one another. 

Benefits of using an affinity diagram

You can use an affinity diagram to generate, organize, and consolidate information that comes out of a brainstorming session. Whether you’re building a product, working through a complex problem, establishing a process, or piecing apart an issue, an affinity diagram is a useful and simple framework.

When to use affinity diagrams

Teams and organizations use affinity diagrams in a variety of situations. When your brainstorming session feels like it’s devolving and there are too many ideas to capture, or when the issues are too large and complex to grasp, you can use an affinity diagram to cut through the chaos. But it’s not only useful during chaotic meetings; you can also use an affinity diagram whenever a consensus is needed, when analyzing data such as survey results, when grouping ideas into themes, or when organizing datasets.

Create your own affinity diagram

Making your own affinity diagram with your team is easy. Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share your own. Get started by selecting this Affinity Diagram template. Then, follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Start recording the ideas that you’d like to sort into categories. 

Step 2: Examine the ideas and try to find related concepts. Discuss with the group. When you notice related concepts, group them together. Repeat this step until you’ve grouped all the concepts.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 until you’ve grouped all the concepts. It’s okay if there are concepts that seem to defy a grouping. You can return to those later.

Step 4: Discuss with your team and make sure everyone is on the same page. Do you agree with the groups? How should you label them? Do you need to make any changes

Step 5: Combine groups into “supergroups,” if needed.