What Is an Affinity Diagram?

Affinity diagram

The affinity diagram is a business tool used to organize ideas and data. It is one of the Seven Management and Planning Tools. People have been grouping data into groups based on natural relationships for thousands of years; however, the term affinity diagram was devised by Jiro Kawakita in the 1960s^[1] and is sometimes referred to as the KJ Method.

The tool is commonly used within project management and allows large numbers of ideas stemming from brainstorming^[2] to be sorted into groups, based on their natural relationships, for review and analysis.^[3] It is also frequently used in contextual inquiry as a way to organize notes and insights from field interviews. It can also be used for organizing other freeform comments, such as open-ended survey responses, support call logs, or other qualitative data.

Process[edit]

The affinity diagram organizes ideas with following steps:

1. Record each idea on cards or notes.
2. Look for ideas that seem to be related.
3. Sort cards into groups until all cards have been used.

Once the cards have been sorted into groups the team may sort large clusters into subgroups for easier management and analysis.^[4] Once completed, the affinity diagram may be used to create a cause and effect diagram.^[5]

In many cases, the best results tend to be achieved when the activity is completed by a cross-functional team, including key stakeholders. The process requires becoming deeply immersed in the data, which has benefits beyond the tangible deliverables.

Also called: affinity chart, affinity mapping, K-J Method, thematic analysis

The affinity diagram organizes a large number of ideas into their natural relationships. It is the organized output from a brainstorming session. Use it to generate, organize, and consolidate information related to a product, process, complex issue, or problem. After generating ideas, group them according to their affinity, or similarity. This idea creation method taps a team’s creativity and intuition. It was created in the 1960s by Japanese anthropologist Jiro Kawakita.

WHEN TO USE AN AFFINITY DIAGRAM

• When you are confronted with many facts or ideas in apparent chaos
• When issues seem too large and complex to grasp
• When group consensus is necessary

Typical situations are:

• After a brainstorming exercise
• When analyzing verbal data, such as survey results
• When collecting and organizing large data sets
• When developing relationships or themes among ideas
• When reducing attributes to categories that can be addressed at a higher level

AFFINITY DIAGRAM PROCESS

The affinity diagram process lets a group move beyond its habitual thinking and preconceived categories. This technique accesses the great knowledge and understanding residing untapped in our intuition. Affinity diagrams tend to have 40 to 60 items; however, it is not unusual to see 100 to 200 items.

Materials needed: Sticky notes or cards, marking pens, and large work surface (wall, table, or floor).

Step 1: Record each idea with a marking pen on a separate sticky note or card

(During a brainstorming session, write directly onto sticky notes or cards if you suspect you will be following the brainstorm with an affinity diagram.) Randomly spread notes on a large work surface so all notes are visible to everyone. The entire team gathers around the notes and participates in the next steps.

Tips: Use markers so words can be read clearly even from a distance. With regular pens, it is hard to read ideas from any distance. Written ideas should be between three and seven words long.

Step 2: Look for ideas that seem to be related in some way and place them side by side

Attempt to look for relationships between individual ideas and have team members simultaneously sort the ideas (without talking) into five to 10 related groupings. Repeat until all notes are grouped. It’s okay to have “loners” that don’t seem to fit a group. It is also okays to move a note someone else has already moved. If a note seems to belong in two groups, make a second note.

Tips: It is very important that no one talk during this step. The focus should be on looking for and grouping related ideas. It is also important to call these “groupings.” Do not place the notes in any order or determine categories or headings in advance.

Step 3: Begin a discussion with your team

From these relationships, attempt to define categories and create summary or header cards for each grouping or category. You can discuss the shape of the chart, any surprising patterns, and especially reasons for moving controversial notes. Make changes and move ideas around as necessary. When ideas are grouped to the team’s satisfaction, select a heading for each group. To do so, look for a note in each grouping that captures the meaning of the group. Place it at the top of the group. If there is no such note, write one. Often it is useful to write or highlight this note in a different color.

Tips: Header cards should clearly identify the common thread for all groupings and should be descriptive of that thread.

Step 4: Combine groups into "supergroups," if appropriate

Assign all ideas to the identified categories by placing ideas under header cards.

Tip: Base assignment on “gut feel,” not through contemplation.

AFFINITY DIAGRAM EXAMPLE #1

The ZZ-400 manufacturing team used an affinity diagram to organize its list of potential performance indicators. Figure 1 shows the list team members brainstormed. Because the team works a shift schedule and members could not meet to do the affinity diagram together, they modified the procedure.

Figure 1 Brainstorming for Affinity Diagram Example

The team members wrote each idea on sticky notes and placed the notes, in random order, on a rarely used door. Over several days, everyone reviewed the notes and moved the notes into related groups. Some people reviewed the evolving pattern several times. After a few days, the natural grouping shown in Figure 2 (below) had emerged.

Notice that one of the notes, "Safety," has become part of the heading for its group. The rest of the headings were added after the grouping emerged. Five broad areas of performance were identified: product quality, equipment maintenance, manufacturing cost, production volume, and safety and environmental.

Figure 2 Affinity Diagram Example

AFFINITY DIAGRAM EXAMPLE #2

The following example comes from a hospital setting. Seeking to better understand the barriers to on-time delivery of medications, the team created an affinity diagram in six steps.

1. 1. Assigned a group leader for the activity.
2. 2. Agreed on a statement of the issue or problem.
   

   Tip: Stating the problem in the form of a question (“What are the barriers to on-time delivery of medications?”) can often prove useful.

3. 3. Brainstormed and recorded ideas.
   

   Tip: You have two main options for gathering ideas from team members. Participation by everyone in the group is assured with silent recording (option b, below), but traditional brainstorming can also generate ideas.

   1. Traditional brainstorming—In order around the group, each person writes an idea or response to the question on a 3” x 5” card while announcing the content of the card to the group.
   2. Silent recording—Each person writes responses on 3" x 5" cards or sticky notes, one idea per card, until all team members have exhausted their store of ideas.
4. 4. Attached all of the cards to the wall, grouping similar ideas together. For example, the team posted together all topics that suggested that the pharmacy may be understaffed.
   

   Tip: After posting all ideas the first time, fine-tune the groupings by moving cards from one pile to another to reflect closer ties. Team members should talk with each other as they arrange the ideas.

5. 5. Labeled each final grouping with a header identifying the general topic that all items in the group share. See Figure 3 (below).
6. 6. Reviewed final groupings and headers. By walking around and examining the posted notes, all members of the group had an opportunity to see the groupings and then to comment on them.

Figure 3 Affinity Diagram On-Time Delivery of Medications

Next Steps: Making Connections to Other Tools

While an affinity diagram may present interesting data and useful ideas, the exercise itself should lead to further analysis. The team can now use a interrelationship diagram, for example, or even a cause-and-effect diagram to get to root causes for late medications.

An affinity diagram, above all, stimulates discussion about a problem or issue, opening up possibilities for improvement or solution. 

AFFINITY DIAGRAM EXAMPLE #3

Company SQBOK seeks to understand the difficulties around and excessive time needed for onboarding new employees. A team of hiring managers, new employees, human resource managers, and peer employees conducted a brainstorming session and identified 15 problems. In an affinity diagram process, all of the ideas were written down on "sticky" pages affixed to a board.

A separate group charged with managing the onboarding process was asked to identify any commonalities or relationships between the ideas. The group identified four main categories: training, paperwork, regulatory, and technology. Each idea was categorized under these general areas. Company SQBOK can now track these four areas and assign them to the appropriate groups for resolution. The process also highlights areas of deficiency.

Details of this exercise, which highlights improvement opportunities for the team, are shown in the table below.

Training Paperwork Regulatory Technology	Orientation is too long Organization charts do not get updated Citizenship establishment process is too lengthy Badges are not returned quickly
Training Paperwork Regulatory Technology	Orientation does not cover office hour access times Request for parking pass should be online Drug testing results not available prior to start System logon access needs to be complete prior to day 1
Training Paperwork Regulatory Technology	Classes specific to our company are too infrequently offered I4 form difficult to understand Computers are all different models and configurations
Training Paperwork Regulatory Technology	Applications needed for each job are different
Training Paperwork Regulatory Technology	Requirements for a laptop need to be identified
Training Paperwork Regulatory Technology	Badges need access levels established prior to start
Training Paperwork Regulatory Technology	Cell phone policy confusing

https://bit.ly/3LUHYtR

Affinity Diagram/Chart

Definition

The Affinity Diagram or Chart is a method for organising the information and data in a more useful and instructive way.

Explanation

Often at the beginning stages of an improvement effort, information is disorganised, ambiguous and chaotic. There are complaints and anecdotes, little data, and little of help, insufficient even to define what is the problem or need.

The affinity chart is a way to begin to bring order out of chaos. It is one of the most intuitive of the improvement methods. Constructing an affinity chart involves several stages of group activity:

• Identifying the topic and purpose of the study.
• Gathering information: Complaints, anecdotes, rumours, opinions and whatever relevant data and specialised knowledge exists.
• Brainstorming whatever else may be important to this issue.
• Placing each individual item identified in the previous two steps on its own index card or Post-it Note™.
• Silently “group” the items.
  • Do it silently – each participant may move cards around until there is a silent consensus.
  • New cards may be written during the grouping.
  • If a group exceeds three cards, subdivide the group.
  • When the groups are completed, label the group, placing the label on a separate card. Continue the silence during this activity.
  • “Group the groups” of cards, no more than three subgroups to a group; label the groups of subgroups. Continue the silence.
• Discuss: What has emerged? What patterns seemed to be clear? What are the implications for the work ahead?

Note: The Japanese also call the Affinity Chart the K-J Diagram and it is one of the seven management tools.

An example of an affinity chart

Theme: What is going wrong in our volunteer organisation?

Financial

Declining revenues

Eroding nest egg

Two more years worth of finances left

Leadership

Few volunteers for leadership roles

Same group every year

...

Membership

Membership getting older

Membership declining

No diversity in membership

Routine

Nothing new to do

Resistance to change

...

...

Need a purpose

We need to get out more

Do community service

Why do we exist as a group?

Material needs

Need a VCR

Need new furniture

Meeting place needs refurbishing

Esprit-needs

We need more liveliness

We need new blood

We need a spark

Method Study

https://bit.ly/3LVHUua

How To Think Visually Using Visual Analogies

Most research in cognitive science explores how we see things but little research is done on how we understand what we see.

Understanding is the ultimate test of how good your visualization is. So how can you make people understand? Show something familiar and analogize. If you know nothing else about visualization but pick the right analogy you are more than half way there. This is what a professional designer does - and there is no substitute for analogies.

How do you choose the right analogy? In this grid I organized analogies from the abstract down to the more detailed. I grouped them by similarity in shape. The goal is to enable you to quickly see the possibilities and “try them on” your information. With time you’ll be able to do all of this in your head. But for now this is a shortcut. 

Let’s start simple and abstract.

Charts, graphs, and diagrams

Let’s start with circular shapes.  (Most things in the universe are round!)

1. Pie Chart. The most popular and criticized. As Edward Tufte says, “…the only thing worse than one pie chart is lots of them”.  The father of modern infographics, Otto Neurath, also rejected pie charts in favor on the more semantic iconographics. Pie charts are best used when divided into two segments:  pie I’ve eaten and pie I have left.  With two segments you can still easily compare the slices in size - something that becomes difficult with more than two, hence the criticism.  Once you have three or more segments you have a comparison problem - our eyes are not used to comparing segments of a circle. We also are bad at comparing different pie charts. That leaves very few cases where a pie chart still works.

2. Venn Diagram. Here is another popular and misused analogy. One thing it does well - show overlap of two to three things. What it does not do well is show how large that overlap is. This diagram is better used when all you need to show is the overlap and nothing else, no data. 

3. Concentric diagram. This is an onion sliced sideways. In the middle is the most important thing, or the purpose of something. The importance should decrease going outward with every layer.

4. Circular chart. The principle here is comparing the length of something, where the whole circle is 100%. That mean we can’t change scale. This is a good way to display schedules, compare the lengths of lives, the time it takes to complete a project, etc. This is not good for showing periods that are so different in length that the smaller periods become invisible. 

5. Bubble chart. This chart is good for roughly comparing quantities. Again, circles are hard to compare precisely. But sometimes impreciseness is to our advantage. Some information is best digested in a rough comparison, especially if every circle is orders of magnitude larger or smaller. This works well for comparing vastly different budgets, stars and planets, populations of countries, nutritional values of foods, and so on.

6. Bubble race chart. Here we give meaning to the positions of bubbles. The closer to the top, the more educated the population of a particular country; or the hotter a star is. That is using the y axis only. Using both axes: the closer to the top and further to the right a bubble is, the more educated a population is and the longer they live.

7. Line chart - this chart is a series of points connected by straight lines - how dramatic the line looks quickly shows how something changes. This chart is versatile because it is so abstract. But little about it is memorable. Still, when the insight you want to communicate is just the changes in something - it works. This chart is the least infographic of all, with pie chart and bar chart not far behind.

8. Area chart - shows the difference between two or more line charts by filling with color the space below the line. Use this chart for trend comparison. 

9. Scatter plot - this chart works well for showing clusters and outliers. Here we want to show exactly where the values fall. The reader will not distinguish points inside clusters, but the points outside of clusters and the clusters themselves will grab the attention. 

10. Sunburst chart - (also ring chart or a multi-level pie chart) this is a pie chart with a hierarchy. There is meaning in how close a given pie chart is to the middle. For example, if the center is the beginning of time, then the closest pie chart is the first period since the beginning. Then you can show the periods within that period. This chart is commonly used to show disk space usage because there is a hierarchical relationship between folders in a computer and sub-folders.

11. Fan chart - shows things that double as they get further away from the center. It is used to show genealogy trees and evolution of ideas .

12. Windrose chart - shows how much of something goes into which direction. This chart started out as a way to show how strong the wind blew in each direction.

13. Bar chart - shows numbers through length of bars. Bar charts work better for showing a smaller number of values than bubble charts. The eye can easily compare the length of bars - use it when it’s important to show the exact value. But it’s better to not use it for comparison - use a tape diagram instead.

14. Tape diagram - shows ratios - how one number relates to another. Imagine you have a piece of tape to measure everything with. Your results will look like this: this is 2 pieces of tape long, this is 5 pieces of tape long, etc.  To make the diagram more meaningful, sections of tape can be substituted with simple icons.

15. Gantt chart - shows stretches of time and how they related to each other. This chart was first used for scheduling projects. Use it to show future predictions, court hearings, train schedules, etc.

16. Tree map - uses nested rectangles to show a hierarchy. This way you can divide rectangles into ever smaller ones (just make sure they are still visible). This way you can visualize budgets, then budgets within them, for example. 

17. Grid - is both a system for arranging things and a visual analogy. As a visual analogy it lets you know immediately that there is no hierarchy - every cell is equal. Yet, there is order. 

18. Periodic table - this is a grid where a cell the position within a column and /or row carries some meaning. For example, the more to the right your cell in the grid, the more reactive is the chemical element. Other examples are: the more to the right the more alcohol content a beverage has, but the further down the more sugar it contains.

19. Arc diagram - this one-dimensional diagram shows the interactions between any two nodes. It reveals patterns well.  Here are some ideas: wars between any two nations, interactions between characters of a novel, collaborations between music artists, etc.

20. Sankey chart - here the thickness of the line represents numbers. Think of a Sankey chart like a river flowing from the source. When the river starts it is one solid line, but as it flows down, it splits into the main river, smaller rivers, creeks, and streams.

21. Chord chart - similar to the arc diagram, a chord chart shows interactions between two nodes. The thickness of the resulting lines shows how strongly any two interact. In a circular chord chart such as this make sure that all variables are of the same type (homogeneous). Sample uses of this chart are the connections between different presidents as measured by the number of phone calls between them, foreign trade partnerships, drug interactions, trips between major cities in the U.S., etc.

22. Radar chart - the length of each spoke shows a number, similar to a bar chart. But in this case we are not emphasizing the difference between them. We are more interested in a rough comparison and the fact that there is a certain number of spokes. This chart is good for analyzing components, characteristics, ingredients of things we normally perceive as a whole.

23. Polar grid - shows characteristics of something similarly to a radar chart, but here you can add more spokes because you are not limited by the number of angles. Tip: you can make this chart in Illustrator using the chart tool.

24. Spiral graph - a time sequence where events closer to the present start furthest from the center. Use this graph to show predictions of the future, evolution, history of time, etc.

25. Timeline - a time sequence where events are shown starting at the top left corners, moving in a spiral. The spiral prompts the eye to follow the narrative naturally, without having to snap back to the start of the next line as we do reading text. Use timelines to visualize biographies, stories, and instructions. This was the first template I built in my infographic tool, Adioma.

26. Side-by-side comparison - two parallel lines with points itemizing the differences between two things. 

27. Abstract Tree - shows hierarchies and groupings. Anything that has sub-types can be presented as a tree.

28. Mind map - anything can be connected to anything here. Just like in the human mind, it seems, no matter how remote or unrelated, any number of things can connect. Use this for brainstorming, to show faulty logic, etc.

29. Decision tree - shows how decisions flow from each other where the shape of a node shows what kind of a decision this is

30. Block scheme or flowchart - shows a solution or an algorithm. The nodes in a block scheme communicate a call to action based on their shape. A rounded rectangle is start or finish, a diamond is a decision, a parallelogram is input or output, and a rectangle is a process. Use this chart for decision making, visualizations of strategies, court decisions, debates, etc.

Abstract Analogies

These are analogies because they are reminiscent of physical objects. But they are simplified and abstract.

31. Pyramid - shows a hierarchy where every upper layer is progressively smaller than every lower layer. This is how power and money are distributed in society. So are social classes and castes. More abstract notions also work - the Maslow pyramid of basic needs, degrees of politeness, nutritional value, etc.

32. Funnel - the reverse of a pyramid. Example: finding a spouse among all the potential candidates as they go through different stages of selection; customer conversion, etc.

33. Spoke wheel - All spokes support the center equally. But their order is not important.  This works for showing equal members or parts of anything: donors of an organization, types of knowledge, theories, probabilities,etc.

34. Cycle wheel - this type of wheel focuses on the never-ending nature of a cycle. This is especially helpful when we want to show that we are not sure what leads to what - a chicken to an egg or an egg to a chicken. 

35. Staircase - this analogy emphasizes the number of steps it takes to achieve something. We can also compare staircases - a staircase with a lot of small steps can lead to the same height as a staircase of few but larger steps. That is insightful. People are familiar with staircases enough to know how difficult it is to go up depending on how challenging the staircase. So you can vary the difficulty of your staircase by making it steeper, with dense steps, or otherwise.

36. Isotype - shows quantities of things with the number of objects (shaped as icons) rather than by enlarging object size like in a bar chart.  Isotype is a visual language invented by Otto Neurath.

37. Subway map - shows how routes with multiple stops intersect. Example: how lines of thought interact in your head, how different research objectives relate to each other, how the theories connect (or don’t connect), how the body transports blood, where stars are located in our galaxy and how they are moving relative to each other.

38. Speedometer chart - shows how increasing the value of something goes from safe to dangerous, slow to fast, etc.

39. Gears - moving one gear sets in motion all others. The insight is that even moving one small gear makes larger gears move. This analogy is about leverage: doing a small favor for someone may result in a much bigger reward down the road, a small program that benefits a disadvantaged community may save a lot of federal dollars in the long-term; building homeless shelters may result in reduction of crime, etc.

40. Puzzle - this shows how irregular pieces fit together despite looking like misfits.

41. Lever - this shows how a small thing can balance or even outweigh a big thing. This analogy works for showing a negotiation strategy, growth potential, a trend in favor of an underdog.

42. Scales - shows comparison, especially when a decision needs to be made. Use it to show pros and cons, positives and negatives, smart and stupid solutions, etc.

43. Chernoff faces - the human face is easily recognizable to people because we look at human faces daily to understand people’s motives, feelings, and familiarity. Every variable in the face - the eye, the nose, the mouth - all can be changed to convey information. The faces don’t just convey sentiment. Any metric that would easily be encoded into human sentiment would work here.

44. Head profile - shows the compartments inside the head - where different thoughts reside and how they are connected.

45. Genealogy tree - this is a variety of an abstract tree that helps trace lineage 

46. Anatomy - points out parts of an object or person, describing what each part does. Examples of use are anatomy of an entrepreneur, anatomy of a rapper, computer etc.

47. Maze - this analogy emphasizes how tangled the paths to a solution are; that there may be more than one way out; and what those outcomes are. Use this analogy to compare strategies, policies, etc.

48.  Map - aside from mapping lands and oceans, maps can be used figuratively to show the world of the Internet for example, where the lands are popular websites, and the oceans are the deep web. The key is to make the analogy tight - make a legend. Since maps can get overly details, it is important to analogy every small part of it.

Analogies

These are true analogies - they look like the physical objects you are familiar with.

49. Iceberg - shows that the visible part of something is much smaller than the underwater part. This is a standard analogy for describing effort, success, and abstract processes. 

50. Mountain - shows a challenge where winning means climbing to the top. The exact terrain of the mountain is your opportunity to carry on the analogy - is the peak out of reach, are the slopes steep all the way, or does it get easier to climb as you get higher?

51. Island - to show an isolated process, where the boundaries are clearly marked, but life inside is complex, an island works as an analogy.

52. Sandwich - multi-layered things with layers spread apart and suspended in the air reveal their innards. Buildings, vehicles, soil, and, of course, sandwiches, or any other dishes, but probably not people and other living creatures. 

53. Universe - this analogy describes things that revolve around a bigger thing without a visible force pulling on them - you can’t see gravity, but you know it exists - you feel it. This analogy works well for how people gravitate to an idea, for example. Or what kind of investors startups attract. You can build a galaxy out of these solar systems to compare them.

54. Clock face - definitely a familiar object to all, the clock makes insight obvious: time can be divided into discrete parts. Using different density of color we can give the segments a new meaning - how busy a building becomes during certain hours, etc.

55. Layers - different levels of something that can be peeled off to get to its heart. This is how you get to the truth, or the secret. Examples are investigations of what the budget was spent on, what excuses people use, etc.

56. Roller coaster - here the emphasis is on the times when things go from good to bad in a second, repeatedly. This is reminiscent of running a business, doing creative work, being in a relationship, parenting, and emotions in general.

57. Book shelf - the size of books shows the volume of information. Their order on the shelf also conveys information.

58. Root - shows how something takes hold. Examples: ideas, immigrants, virus in a body, celebrity in the media, etc.

59. Tree - shows branches splitting into ever smaller ones ones. This analogy describes knowledge, the spread of ideas, evolution of species, etc.

60. Circulatory system - this shows movement from the heart towards the outer parts of anything. Examples of use would be a transportation system - how the heart of the city is connected with the outskirts. Another feature of this analogy is showing two different things are moving depending on the direction - good blood from the heart and bad blood to the heart.

Allegories

These are stories, or a series of analogies. The key is that these stories are familiar enough that we don’t have to retell them, but we should analogize every part of them.

61. Life of a building - life activities in the different rooms of a building show how the same person or things can act completely differently depending on where they are in the building.

62. Life of a city - cities are notable for structuring their inhabitants into grids of apartments, streets, and neighborhoods while at the same time allowing for entropic movement along the sidewalks. This analogy works well for showing how a structure process works, combining the predictable with the random.

63. Marathon - a marathon is a type of timeline. The emphasis here is on the the state of things as the race progresses, especially at the final steps. This analogy works well for things that are  easier to start than to finish: building a company, writing a novel, 

64. Evolution - this is a type of a timeline as well, except here we are looking at a gradual change in something. The result of the evolution is something dramatically different than the start. Versions of computers over time, understanding of science, etc.

65. Food chain - in many areas of life there is big fish and then there is small fish. The big eat the small. This analogy applies to company acquisitions, to competition where there is only one winner, to budget reallocation, etc.

66. Concentration - when we want to compare things that never occur together, intentionally concentrating them in one place for comparison is powerful. This way we can compare landmarks that stand half a world away from each other, famous people separated by time and distance, countries that aren’t neighbors. Giving a bit of an overlap between them makes this effect even more visual. 

67. Experiment - shows where things are connected in an unusual way, especially where they are combined and then separated and combined again. Experiments are synthetic, though, and not as relatable as other natural analogies. Still, an experiment works for showing abstract research methodologies - the mixing of liquids and their movement in tubes.

68. Factory - a factory is a man-made environment. Use this analogy only if all the natural ones are not suitable. Not everyone has been to a factory. Some factories, especially those employing a lot of robots would seem alien to most people and would become an analogy within analogy - which doesn’t help. But most people would recognize a mechanical process inside a factory - the conveyor belt, the widgets, the assembly line.

69. Tool set -  describing how someone works can come down to their eye-view - what does that person see while they are working or following a process. 

70. Conveyor belt -  This is an automatically that adds or subtracts something from a series of identical objects. Schools or education in general (in the more cynical view of it), a creative process like novel writing, the passing of a law, quality control - all can be analogized as a conveyor belt. There may be a pejorative meaning to this analogy for things that most of us think should be personalized, like education and health care.

71. Road -  anyone has walked down a road. Anything that can be broken down into steps can be visualized as a road. A baking recipe, a way to sign up on a website, get a surgery, become an astronaut, pack a suitcase, etc. Any timeline will work as a road. But a road is more emotional than a timeline - so first ask if your message should be emotional.

72. Machine - again, a man-made object. Any contraption, even imaginary, will work as long as its parts are familiar. This analogy gives you a lot of freedom - you can construct any machine - but again there is, a danger of creating an analogy with analogy. If you are going to create a machine, same user interface principles apply as if you were actually making one - it should be clear which buttons do what, where the process starts and ends.

The key to making a visualization that works is connecting what your reader has seen before to new information. The more familiar the object the better. Remember, most people do not look for details in what surrounds them. Don’t expect most readers to remember what a robotic arm looks like and then analogize to it. As a rule of thumb, nature is more familiar to us than man-made objects. Things comparable in size with our bodies are more familiar than very small or very large things. 

How to find the best visual analogy?

Follow there 5 principles:

1. It looks familiar to most of people

2. It has a structure

3. It matches your narrative’s structure 

4. It is visible (something that can be seen)

5. It is visual (something that is easy to see)

So, a good visual analogy is an image of a very familiar physical object that closely matches your information in structure. 

What sort of objects are familiar to people? Between nature and man-made objects, nature wins (at least for now). 

Objects with fewer details are more familiar - because most people don’t look for detail. That means you should give readers a way to see your information design with and without details. At bird’s eye view, and up close.

If we take all detail out of objects, we are left with abstractions - graphs and charts. They are unemotional, and unmemorable. But it is a starting point. And a practical way to visualize information fast.

Therefore, it makes sense to look at all visual information as a continuum from the detailed and familiar (trees, stars, cities, etc) to the abstract and simplified (charts and graphs).  We can think of this continuum in the reverse because it takes less effort to create an abstract visualization. But it’s worth remembering that for your readers - it is the opposite: they are emotionally attached to detail; they find meaning in familiar objects; and they prefer the story to be visible. That describes most humans. But are most humans your readers?

This leads us to the million dollar question: who exactly are you readers? Here, I assume that the global Internet community of today - that is 3 Billion people, are your readers. If you create a visualization, wouldn’t you want it to be understandable to most people who might see it? Most people are not statisticians and not artists - they look at the world like people do, probably just like you.

Last, we know that we are visualizing information. But what sort of information? There is a well established field of data visualization - but data is something less than information. There is a field of information design - we are here. Since I strive to show the connection of the information to the reader as well as the information itself, numeric or not, I will call this knowledge visualization. Knowledge is information that you managed to connect to your life experience. Information becomes knowledge once it is acquired, understood, used, digested, or otherwise experienced.

In the end what matters is a strong connection to a mental image. This connection explains the information you are visualizing without you having to tell it - you have no space to do that in a visualization. 

ANNA VITAL

information designer