We've been hard at work enhancing your research capabilities, and we're excited to share what's new at Optimal. Here's what we've shipped to help you uncover even deeper insights:

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What’s new at Optimal? 

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Prototype Testing gets more powerful ⚡

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Since launching the Beta, we've been collaborating closely with hundreds of Optimal customers to gather feedback and run usability testing. Your support has been invaluable, and we’re excited to announce these latest updates for Prototype Testing:

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Improved security with password management: A new "Password settings" button allows users to manage stored passwords, which participants receive before starting their Prototype Study. Additionally, users are prompted for a password when importing protected prototypes.

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Improvements to usability: Your feedback was taken onboard, and we’ve updated the buttons, including "Re-sync to file" and "Change prototype," to improve usability.

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Results sharing: You can now easily share specific sections (e.g., analysis, tasks, clickmaps) via a URL with your stakeholders in just a few clicks. With the added protection of a password for secure access.

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Participant data view: To speed up your data analysis and improve your workflows we’ve added task metrics in the "Results > Participants" table, showing tasks completed, skipped, and success percentage.

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Notes tab in analysis: Users can now take notes directly in the Analysis section for Task Results, Click Maps, Paths, and Questionnaires.

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Smarter data exports📊

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This release makes it easier for users to analyze data faster with flexible export options and an improved format for questionnaire and survey downloads. Find out more about the updates below.

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• Additional download export options: Access new download questionnaire data options. Choose to download questionnaire data by pre-study, post-study, and screening questions.

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• Organized question tabs: Navigate your data more easily with each question exported to its own tab in the download spreadsheet. Each question tab will mirror the question and answer format/structure found under the Questionnaire section.

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• Dedicated screening question tab: Review screener questions - now separated in a dedicated tab - with the added option to exclude them from your export.

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• Added index numbers for survey analysis: An index number column (e.g. 1, 2, 3) has been added next to the labels for radio, Likert, and checkbox question types in the "Participant data" download for easier analysis. A new tab has been added to display answer indices for fixed set questions (e.g., radio, checkbox, multi-select), while matrix questions will still export with their values.

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To get started, navigate to the Downloads tab under Results. Results Downloads are available for all tools except for Qualitative Insights.

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What’s coming next?

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Introducing the shiny new Qualitative Insights tool (the artist formally known as Reframer)✨

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We’re just days away from the re-launch of our Qualitative Insights tool, previously known as Reframer. This upgrade brings powerful new features to streamline and enhance your qualitative data analysis, making it faster, easier, and more insightful than ever.

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With the new Insights feature, you can capture and organize key takeaways from studies more efficiently. Each Insight — which includes a title, description, and linked observations — will live under the new Insights tab, allowing you to quickly gather and manage critical findings. You can create Insights directly from your observations or leverage AI to accelerate insight discovery, surfacing hidden themes within your data.

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AI-Driven Insights with full control: You and your organization retain complete control over AI usage. All AI-generated results are fully editable, giving you the flexibility to adjust or even turn off AI support for your studies. Use AI as much or as little as needed, with peace of mind over your data management.

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Surveys 2.0 🌟

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Enhanced usability
Our survey relaunch focuses on significantly improving usability, making creating, editing, and launching surveys easier than ever. Key releases coming late 2024 include:

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• Simplified setup: Manage your entire survey flow - welcome, screening, pre-study, study questions, and thank you - on one page.

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• Question grouping: Create and manage question groups for better organization.

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• Question mobility: Move individual questions or groups within a study effortlessly.

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• Flexible question placement: Add questions at any point in the survey flow.

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• Question cloning: Easily duplicate questions to save time.

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Video Insights: Coming end of 2024 🎬

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By the end of the year, we’ll be adding Video Recording to our Prototype Testing tool. This new feature will allow you to better understand user experiences, and gain even deeper insights during a Prototype test. Video recording will be browser-based, with no plug-in required, eliminating setup complexities. Participant consent to record screen, face and voice is all taken care of by Optimal and captured upfront in the testing process. 

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Help shape what comes next 🫵

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Join our research panel and influence Optimal's future! You'll get early access to new features and thank-you gifts for your time. Interested? 

Email product@optimalworkshop.com

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We're thrilled to announce the re-launch of our Qualitative Insights tool, formerly known as Reframer. This powerful upgrade brings new features designed to revolutionize your qualitative data analysis process, making it faster, easier, and more insightful than ever before.

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Introducing the new Qualitative Insights 🔍

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Qualitative Insights has always been your go-to tool to help you plan and organize interviews, take notes, tag, and analyze rich, unstructured data. Now, we've taken it to the next level with two game-changing additions:

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• Insights feature: A dedicated space to capture, organize, and communicate your key takeaways.‍
• AI capabilities: Optional AI-powered assistance to accelerate your analysis process.

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Discover insights effortlessly 💡 

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The new Insights feature transforms how you work with qualitative data:

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• Centralized hub: All your analytical discoveries in one place.
• Structured insights: Each insight includes a title, detailed description, and associated observations.
• Flexible viewing: Toggle between overview and deep-dive modes.
• Efficient organization: Tag and categorize insights for easy retrieval.
• Collaboration tools: Share and discuss findings with your team.

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How it works 🛠️ 

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Manual insight creation

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1. Filter your data using keywords, tags, affinity map groupings, tasks, segments, and sessions.
2. Select relevant observations.
3. Craft your insight with a custom title and description.

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AI-Powered Insight Generation (Optional)

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1. Click "Generate" to activate our AI assistant.
2. AI analyzes existing observations to produce new insights.
3. Automatically generates insight titles, summaries, and attaches relevant observations.
4. AI-generated insights are marked with an AI star symbol for easy identification.
5. All AI insights remain fully editable.

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AI: Your analysis assistant 🤖

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Our AI capabilities are designed to enhance your abilities, not replace them. Use AI to:

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• Speed up insight discovery
• Reveal hidden patterns in your data
• Jumpstart the analysis process

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Remember, your expertise is crucial. Always review and refine AI-generated insights to ensure accuracy and capture nuances that only human understanding can provide.

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Your data, your choice 🔒 

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We prioritize your privacy and data control:

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• Your data stays within your organization
• We don't use it to train other AI models
• You control when to use AI for insights
• AI features can be turned on or off anytime

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Get started today 🌟 

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Ready to experience the power of the new Qualitative Insights? Learn more and dive in. Upgrade your qualitative analysis workflow and uncover deeper insights faster than ever before with Qualitative Insights!

The accuracy of your data collection is crucial in qualitative research. It is vital that nothing is lost in translation or simply missed from the point of collection to analysis, and our latest release makes this even easier to achieve. You can now directly import interview transcripts into Qualitative Insights (previously known as Reframer), allowing you and your team to capture and tag observations effortlessly while maintaining the integrity of the information. Get ready to experience a new level of efficiency in your qualitative research!

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The importance of transcription ✍🏽

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Whether you are conducting interviews alone or with the support of your team, it’s important to prioritize building connections with participants rather than struggling to take notes and ask the right questions. Transcripts ensure you avoid losing crucial insights and context as you move from data collection to analysis and reduce the likelihood of human errors and missed observations that sometimes occur during live note-taking sessions. 

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It also enables smooth collaboration among team members by allowing them to review interviews and contribute to the analysis, even if they weren't present.

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How to import a transcript to Qualitative Insights

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Watch the video 📽️ 👀

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You can add a transcript to a new or existing study in Qualitative Insights with just a few clicks. After recording an interview or user testing session, open your Qualitative Insights study and click ‘Sessions’ then ‘+ Transcript.’

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Add a session title, any session information or a link to the video for future reference in the session information box. If you have created segments, choose which ones apply to this participant; you can update these later at any time. Then click ‘import transcript.’

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Click ‘Select transcript’ and ensure you made any edits before importing it. This feature supports .vtt, .srt, or .txt files. Now, click Capture observations’ to complete the import and create and tag your observations.

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You will see your transcript displayed. If you use a .vtt or .srt file, you will see the speaker names have been identified. You can update the speaker names by clicking on configure speakers.

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How to create observations

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To create observations from your transcript, simply highlight text, enter a new tag or select an existing one, then click create an observation.

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There is no limit to how many transcripts you can import. This means you can import all your past and future interviews, ensuring all your research data is in one place for easy access and analysis.

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Take the Qualitative Insights Academy Course 📚

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Qualitative Insights supports your entire qualitative research workflow, from conducting interviews and capturing observations to tagging and visualizing your data.   It keeps all your valuable user interviews and usability testing metadata in one place.

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To learn more about how to get the most out of Qualitative Insights, take the Qualitative Insights course at the Optimal Academy. In this short course, you'll learn how to set yourself and your team up to capture, tag, and group your observations to get to the insights faster.

If you're more of a visual person, you can watch a 20 minute talk which explains how to use the narrative arc in your in-person research.

The power of stories

Stories are powerful things. You don’t need me to tell you that! You’ve probably read a book, seen a play, a film or a TV series and thought: “Man*, that was brilliant! The way they drew all those threads together in that last scene. I was totally with them!”

We’ve been telling each other stories for millennia - they were the way we explained the world around us as well as the way in which we entertained ourselves.

From an early age, the logic of stories is hard-wired into our minds through repetition. This is why, two thirds of the way through a story you have a fair idea of where things are headed and can take a good guess at what is going to happen in the end.

*Except you didn't say 'Man', as you aren't as old as me.

The narrative arc

In 1863 Freytag developed this pyramid which he used to explain what was happening in stories:

• EXPOSITION: The characters, the context are introduced
• INCITING INCIDENT: Something happens to begin the action
• RISING ACTION: The story builds
• STORY CLIMAX: The point of greatest tension
• FALLING ACTION: Events that happen as a result of the climax
• RESOLUTION: The problem is wrapped up and solved
• DENOUEMENT: The end, what happens to our characters

Many, many stories follow this arc; they may miss off the exposition or skip the resolution but they will have that story climax where all the threads come together.

The narrative arc in in-person research

So, the narrative arc is interesting, but how does it relate to in-person research? How does knowing the plot of Little Red Riding Hood help you become a better researcher?

The problem with in-person research

In-person research can be very nerve-wracking for you and for your participants.

I’ve seen people conducting interviews who know what they want to find out get lost in futile questions having taken the wrong turn, or ‘spoiling’ an interview by revealing too much about the subject or mentioning it too soon.

Participants can also find interviews nerve-wracking. They might struggle to understand the context of questioning and may feel they have ‘done a bad job’ as they haven’t given useful answers. As apparently random questions come at them, they can feel off balance and concerned. The whole experience can start to feel like a police interview*. There’s no thread for them to follow.

*Real police interviews are not like they are shown on TV. Real police interviews are thorough, repetitive, detailed and rational. No shouting or table-tipping.

Let’s look at the steps in the narrative arc and how they apply to an in-person research situation.

Exposition

Start the story by introducing the characters - yourself and who else is in attendance but also give the participant the chance to say something about themselves.

Give a little backstory or context about the research - not so much that you ‘give away the plot.’ Explain ‘why we’re here’, let the participant answer some really simple questions so that they can get some 'runs on the board' and get over any nerves.

Inciting incident

Ask the first question that gets things moving. Usually something that lets the participant give their context. For example, “Tell me about the last time you…”

Rising action

Here’s where you can ask questions that build on each other and let the participant really expand on their story. Your job is to guide them towards the story climax which is where you hit them with your most important question.

The trick in the rising action is to reduce the bias as much as you can by carefully ordering and phrasing the questions so that you don’t give away too much and so the participant can respond without feeling driven to an answer.

Climax

You've got your participant to the point where they have all of the context to answer your most important question or questions, so go ahead and ask them.

Strictly speaking in stories, you tend only to have one story climax. In your research you may have several, but not so many that the participant feels like a quote machine. The story climax is going to line up with the research objectives you set before you wrote your discussion guide. If it doesn’t, your research is not going to give you the insights you were looking for.

Falling action

Now that the cat's out of the bag, your participant will understand why you asked some of the questions in the rising action. Go ahead and give them the chance to reflect. You can also tie up those loose ends, things you skated over as they might color the key response: “So earlier, when I asked you about X you said Y. Tell me about that.”

Resolution

Every session ends with a final word from the participant. People like to ask the ‘what if you had a magic wand’ question, but I find it better to ask about people’s feelings towards something. Whether that’s an existing issue or a future opportunity.

Denouement

It’s a fancy French term for 'ending' and all sessions must have one. This is where you thank the participant for their time, give them their incentive, encourage them to reach out if they have further thoughts. For some participants, it's important as they may have all the time in the world and need to be given the right signals that ‘we’re done, thanks’!

Summary

Use the narrative arc to help you order your thoughts when you're writing your discussion guide and when running your sessions.

If your in-person session shows clear drive in a direction - has subtle guiding story cues - even if the participant doesn’t know exactly where you are heading, they will be able to contribute meaningfully. The arc of the story that you are both telling will provide enough context for them to answer each question you ask - at the point you ask it.

Furthermore, your participant will leave your session feeling good about the experience and your organization. It’s a win-win!

In our latest live training session product experts, Pete and Caitlin, take us on a deep dive into the new and improved qualitative analysis tool Reframer.

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The session is loaded with tips and demo’s on how to save time and streamline your qualitative research all within one tool.  They also discuss best practices for setting up and conducting user interviews, and how to get the most out of your analysis.

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What’s better than a UX team doing awesome research? A whole organization backing investment in UX research. What’s that look like in practice?  Collaboration and support from stakeholders across the organization throughout the research process from set up, doing studies, sharing insights, and digesting, understanding, and actioning recommendations based on the amazing insights you generate.

UX research should be something that is known, understood, and expected across your organization. Rather than keeping all the insight goodies to yourselves, why not democratize user research by making it accessible and shareable to all stakeholders to drive understanding of its value wherever they sit in the organization?

We go into this in more detail in our ebook UX Research for Teams. By including the stakeholders throughout the process, the role of research becomes a lot more visible throughout the organization. Having the best online tools to make the whole process simple and straightforward is a great place to start.

1. Who owns the research?

Recognition that the user research undertaken in your organization benefits the whole organization is essential for setting up key resources. By ensuring that everyone is operating from the same set of tools, the insights and results are easier to manage, find and file. It also means if someone leaves,  they don’t leave with all the insights and knowledge.

2. Everyone’s a researcher

Everyone within the organization should have the opportunity to be involved with UX research and should be encouraged to have a base understanding of the process (and even try out the tools) or, at the very least, have some understanding of the results and insights. If everyone has access to the tools, they can use these no matter where they sit in the organization. 

3. Don’t get distracted by shiny things

Maintaining a single source of research, with a well-organized filing system means you can always look at what has gone before. It is a great place to start. The best UX researchers often revisit past studies to see where to go from here. Creating consistency through the process and output means comparing insights are simpler.

4. Research is better with friends

What’s better than one mind? It’s two or more. Working alongside a team opens new perspectives, thinking, problem-solving, and approaches. New ways to see a problem and how to interpret insights and results. By socializing your results with the key stakeholders, you bring them on the journey, explaining how and why UX research is important to the project and the wider team. Firming up the opportunity for future research.

5. Qualitative research insights that are simple to find

Qualitative research tools are designed to assist you with testing types, including user interviews, contextual inquiries, and usability tests. Working as a team with tags, sorting, and recording can be made simple and streamlined. 

One of the best decisions you can make as a researcher is to bring the organization along for the ride. Setting up consistent tools across the team (and beyond) will help streamline research, making it simpler for all to be involved at each step of the process. Embedding UX research into each part of the organization. 

Take a look at our ebook UX Research for Teams, where we go into more detail.

The only tool you need to power your entire qualitative research workflow is here. We’re excited to announce the new and improved Reframer is now live for all customers!

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What is qualitative research?

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It’s an integral part of any research journey. Think: customer or stakeholder interviews, prototype testing, A/B testing, moderated interviews, and open-ended questions. In a nutshell, it’s anything that isn’t a closed question.

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It’s also the most popular research method – 85% of people who do research conduct interviews and usability tests as part of their projects or workflows.

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How can Reframer help me with my qualitative research?

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It’s no secret that anyone conducting research is time-poor. Qualitative research is especially time-consuming and messy, as it’s almost always conducted across multiple tools or mediums. 

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Reframer gives you your time back, and enables you to manage your entire qualitative research workflow within one single tool. 

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From setting up and conducting interviews, through to analyzing your data – you can uncover those juicy insights in days, not weeks (or months) without ever having to leave the Optimal Workshop app.

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Powerful, in depth tagging and analysis tools

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Analyzing and making sense of your interview or usability testing data with Reframer is easy and flexible (not to mention very aesthetically pleasing!)  

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Visualize and group observations with the affinity map

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Affinity mapping is a flexible and visual way to quickly group, organize and make sense of qualitative data (i.e. post-its and whiteboards). 

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With Reframer, affinity mapping is more powerful than ever. Your observations, tags and themes are all connected and stored in one place. It’s easy to search and filter your data, group like observations by proximity, then review and sort them in table format. 

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Discover patterns with the theme builder

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The Themes tab offers tag-based analysis with powerful filters. It enables you to explore the relationships between your observations and then create themes based on these relationships. This gives you more quantifiable results to support the qualitative, observation-based analysis that you’ve done in the affinity map. 

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Explore connections between tags with the chord diagram

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The chord diagram is a beautifully visual way to easily explore the relationships between your tagged observations and spot key themes. 

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If you’ve got a lot of tags, it may look a little overwhelming to start with. But don’t let that fool you – it’s easy to get the hang of, and once you do, you’ll wonder how you ever analyzed data without it!

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Real-time collaboration with your team

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We recommend that you conduct qualitative research as a team, whenever you can. Reframer makes this easy – it was built with collaboration in mind. 

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Invite study members

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On an Optimal Workshop team plan, you can work together from start to finish. Team members can take notes and create or use tags during interview sessions. In the affinity map, you can work collaboratively to group and edit observations in real-time. 

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Invite guest notetakers

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If you just need an extra helping hand with taking notes during your interviews or usability tests, you can invite guest notetakers to your sessions. Guest notetakers can take notes in the sessions you invite them to, but can’t see notes taken by others or analyze data.

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The guest notetakers feature is a great way to involve your wider team or stakeholders in your user research activities.

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Share your findings

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Need the raw data from your interviews? Want to share your affinity map visuals with other team members? Both are easily downloadable with the click of a button!

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An intuitive, end-to-end workflow

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When it comes to conducting qualitative research, Reframer is faster, easier and tidier than using other digital (or manual) tools. It houses all your data and insights in one place and supports the collaborative nature of qualitative research. 

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It’s not just for seasoned researchers either. We’ve put special focus on ensuring that the analysis is easy to learn for anyone doing qualitative research, regardless of skill level. And our in-app guidance will have you up to speed in no time.

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So what are you waiting for? Login now and get started on your Reframer journey!

Over the past year, we've been busy getting ready to bring Reframer v2 out of beta. After implementing a ton of feedback from our superb beta users and plenty of usability testing, the day has finally arrived. It's time to say bye-bye beta!

What is Reframer v2 beta?

Reframer v2 is a connected, collaborative and flexible workflow for your qualitative research and analysis. It allows you to capture, code, group, visualize and analyze your data within one single tool. And it's now available to all Optimal Workshop customers on a paid plan!

Conducting user interviews or usability tests? Reframer v2 is your new best friend.

To all the Reframer users out there, you'll be chuffed to know that we've taken the best bits of the original tool and added better analysis and collaboration (among other things). We think you'll really enjoy using Reframer v2 (and there's plenty of help to get you up and running in no time).

Why should I use Reframer v2?

We made it our mission to alleviate those pesky pain points that so many researchers have when conducting qualitative analysis.

No more context switching

Observations, notes and metadata spread across different tools? No thanks. There's no need for multiple platforms anymore.

Reframer v2 offers an intuitive end-to-end qualitative research workflow within one tool. Create and conduct interview sessions, capture notes, tag, group, theme, analyze, and collaborate without having to leave the app.

Detailed insights at your fingertips

With all your juicy data living in different tools, it can be pretty tricky to filter and gain in-depth insight.

Reframer v2 doesn't take a "one size fits all" approach. It's specifically built for qualitative research, with all your metadata and context in one place, all easily searchable with powerful filters.

Analyze your data your way

When you're ready for analysis, you don't want to be stuck doing it one way or the other.

We've added two different analysis methods to Reframer v2. Affinity mapping helps you with observation-based analysis, which is flexible, visual and collaborative. While the Themes tab offers tag-based analysis with powerful filters, giving you more quantifiable results.

Collaborate in real-time

Collaboration is key during qualitative research and analysis.

You can work together with your team members in Reframer v2. Simply invite them to your study and any edits or notes they make will show on the affinity map in real-time. You can also see their activity in the Study Members tab.

What will happen to the original Reframer?

Reframer v1 will be turned off eventually, and Reframer v2 will simply become Reframer. But we want to make sure that v2 is up to scratch, your data is safe and sound, and you're confident in using v2 before that happens.

Take a look at the next steps of the Reframer v2 release:

June 2022

Reframer v2 is rolled out to all paid customers. Based on feedback, we'll continue to build in and iterate on the most requested features. Reframer v2 will be the default for all new paid users, but current users can continue to toggle between v1 and v2.

Oct 2022

Reframer v2 is rolled out to all customers and is the default for all users. All studies in legacy Reframer will be moved into v2. Paid customers will have access to the full feature set, free users will have access to a limited version of the tool.

Early 2023 (date TBC)

Legacy Reframer is turned off and v2 becomes the new (and only) Reframer.

So there you have it! We're really excited to have Reframer v2 in front of all our paid customers, and we can't wait to hear what you think of it. If you've got suggestions or thoughts (good, bad or ugly), we want to know! Simply click the Feedback icon in the header and voila!

User research is key to discovering the inner workings of your users’ minds – their emotional, organizational, informative needs and desires. These are all super important to creating a user experience that is intuitive and meeting your users’ needs in a way that means they feel loved, cared for and considered. All the deep understanding stuff that keeps them coming back!

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Qualitative research allows you to collect verbatim data from participants that give insights into why they do or feel things. You can even get into whether ‘Dee’ understood how the website worked or why ‘Andrew’ would (or wouldn’t) revisit the app outside of testing.

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Gathering these awesome insights is one step. Analyzing and organizing these is a skill and talent in its own right. And armed with the right tools or methods it can be immersive, interesting and a great way to get under the skin of your users. Let’s take a look at affinity mapping as a method of analyzing this data - as a tool it can help researchers visualize and easily group and theme data.

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Affinity mapping is used outside of the UX world and can be done independently, however is a great analysis method to use collaboratively. For researchers, it can be a great tool to collaborate and engage the team and potentially stakeholders. Bringing people together to identify, discuss and resolve user experience issues. 

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Here we’ll lay out what affinity mapping is, specifically why it’s useful for user research and set out key steps to get you underway. 

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What is Affinity Mapping? 🗺️

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By definition, affinity mapping is the process of collecting, organizing, and grouping qualitative data to create an affinity diagram.

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Put simply it is a tool to group, map, sort and categorize information. A tool where you’ll look at the information and patterns of your qualitative user research and work to group these together to make sense of them. It helps you to find patterns, similar outcomes and insights that allow you to draw conclusions and collate results in a cohesive manner, then report to the wider team in a way that makes sense and provides a clear road to applicable and achievable outcomes.

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What is an Affinity Diagram? 🖼️

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An affinity diagram is what you have once you have gone through the affinity mapping process. It is the final ‘diagram’ of your grouping, sorting and categorizing. An ordered visual sorting of insights and information from your user research. And the place to filter or funnel observations and information into patterns and reach final outcomes. 

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Allowing you to see where the key outtakes are and where there may need to be improvements, changes or updates. And from here a roadmap can be decided.

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Essentially the mapping part is the process of creating the diagram, a visual sorting of insights and information from your user research. So how do you make affinity mapping work for you?

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1. Start with a large space

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This could be a table, desk, pinboard or even a whiteboard. Somewhere that you can stick, pin or attach your insights to in a collaborative space. Becoming more common recently is the use of shared digital and online whiteboard tools.  allowing people to access and participate remotely.

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2. Record all notes

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Write observations, thoughts, research insights on individual cards or sticky notes.

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3. Look for patterns

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As a group read, comment and write notes or observations. Stick each of the notes onto the board, desk or whiteboard. Add, and shuffle into groups as you go. You can keep adding or moving as you go.

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4. Create a group/theme

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This will start to make sense as more sticky notes are added to the map. Creating groups for similar observations or insights, or for each pattern or theme.

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5. Give each theme or group a name

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As more notes are added there will be natural groups formed. Openly discuss if there are notes that are more difficult to categorize or themes to be decided. (We’ve outlined some ideas for UX research themes in another section below.)

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6. Determine priorities

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You’ve tidied everything into themes and groups, now what? How do you decide which of these are priorities for your organization? Discussion and voting can be the best way to decide what outcomes make the most sense and may have the biggest impact on your business.

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7. Report on your findings

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Pulling together and reporting on the findings through your affinity diagram process should be key to putting actionable outcomes in place.

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How to define research themes 🔬

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Commonly, user research is digested through thematic analysis. During thematic analysis, you aim to make sense of all the notes, observations, and discoveries you’ve documented across all your information sources, by creating themes to organize the information. 

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Depending on your role and the type of research you conduct, the themes you create for your affinity diagram can vary. Here are some examples of affinity groups that you could form from your UX research:

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• User sentiment and facial expressions when completing certain tasks
• Frequently used words or phrases when describing a product or experience
• Suggestions for improving your product or experience

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Wrap up 🌯

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Qualitative user testing and the resulting observations can be some of the best insights you get into your users’ minds. Filtering, organizing and ordering these disparate and very individual observations can be tricky. Especially if done in silo.

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So, draw a team together, bring in stakeholders from throughout your organization and work collaboratively to sort, organize and categorize through affinity mapping. This opens the doors to discussion, buy-in and ultimately a collective understanding of user research. Its importance and its role within the organization. And most importantly the real-world implications UX research and its insights have on organizational products and output.

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