Understanding Chapter in Innovating for People: Handbook of Human-centered Design Methods. Pittsburgh, PA: LUMA Institute, LLC 2012. Print
- Affinity Clustering
- Graphically sorting items according to similarity
- Purposes:
- Identify issues and insights
- Reveal thematic patterns
- Facilitate productive discussion
- Build a shared understanding
- Preparation steps:
- Identify research topic
- Gather data set
- Record each item on a separate card or sticky note
- Form a team of collaborators and pick a facilitator
- Implementation steps:
- Have one person describe, then place an item
- Invite others to place similar items in proximity of that item
- Repeat steps until all items are grouped.
- Discuss and rearrange items as grouping emerge
- Label final clusters
- Helpful hints:
- Don’t label clusters too early. They may shift.
- Look for opportunities to create subgrouping.
- Consider color coding different types of data
- Sample process:
- Purpose: Evaluate and improve an existing system
- Steps:
- Heuristic Review (Looking)
- Affinity Clustering (Understanding)
- Importance / Difficult Matrix (Understanding)
- School applications:
- Analyze admit / exit tickets
- Analyze parts / activities / policies that contribute to classroom and school-wide culture
- Analyze parts / activities / politics that support key schooled initiatives such as AP test prep, state test prep, promoting STEM, SAT/ACT test prep, etc
- Bull’s-eye Diagramming
- Using a target diagram to rank items in order of importance
- Purposes:
- Determine what’s most essential
- Facilitate productive discussion
- Build consensus
- Help develop action plan
- Preparation Steps:
- Identify a project that requires prioritization
- Make a large poster with 3 concentric circles
- Label circles: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary.
- Recruit team to conduct analysis
- Gather data set
- Divide data set into small units
- Print each data item on small strips of paper or on sticky notes
- Implementation Steps:
- Debate the relative importance of each item
- Plot the data on the target and set priorities
- Helpful hints:
- Size center ring to fit a limited number of items
- Enforce a time limit on each round of deliberation
- Remember that tertiary doesn’t mean irrelevant
- Sample process:
- Purpose: Prioritizing functions, planning a navigation scheme and creating model of new concept
- Steps:
- Bull’s-Eye Diagramming (Understanding)
- Schematic Diagramming (Making)
- Rough & Ready Prototyping (Making)
- School applications:
- Prioritize learning targets (long term and supporting, academic and character) in a project as a precursor to designing scaffolding and assessments and project calendar
- Prioritize learning targets (long term) over an entire year as a precursor to developing yearlong scope & sequence
- Prioritize T-TESS dimensions prior to develop an action plan for improving key dimensions
- Importance / Difficulty Matrix
- Quad chart for plotting items by relative importance and difficulty
- Importance (x-axis), Difficulty (y-axis)
- Lower Left Quadrant = targeted, easiest to realize
- Upper Left Quadrant = luxurious, costly items with little return
- Upper Right Quadrant = Strategic, large investments to get big results
- Lower Right Quadrant = High value, yield high impact at low price
- Purposes:
- Quick prioritization process
- Resolves differing opinions
- Helps team develop plan of action
- Preparation steps:
- Identify project in need of prioritization
- Make quad poster chart
- Label axes – x-axis = Importance, y-axis = Difficulty
- Form a discussion team
- Implementation steps:
- Plot items horizontally and vertically by their importance and difficulty.
- Look for related groupings.
- Set priorities
- Helpful tips:
- Give each item its own place on a relative scale
- Listen carefully to deliberations around each placement
- Sample process:
- Purpose: Generating diverging ideas, converging on best one and moving forward with prioritized concepts
- Steps:
- Creative matrix (Making)
- Visualize the vote (Understanding)
- Importance / Difficulty Matrix (Understanding)
- School applications:
- Prioritize learning targets (long term and supporting, academic and character) in a project as a precursor to designing scaffolding and assessments and project calendar
- Prioritize learning targets (long term) over an entire year as a precursor to developing yearlong scope & sequence
- Prioritize T-TESS dimensions prior to develop an action plan for improving key dimensions
- Prioritize scaffolding ideas for upcoming projects
- Prioritize product ideas for upcoming projects
- Quad chart for plotting items by relative importance and difficulty
- Visualize the Vote
- Quick poll of collaborators to reveal preferences and opinions
- Purposes:
- Rate and rank preferences
- Reveal thematic patterns
- Diminish overbearing opinions
- Democratize decision making
- Preparation steps:
- Select subject of polling activity
- Implementation steps
- Announce criteria for voting
- Give reviewers sticky notes as voting tokens
- 1 token – overall vote
- 2 tokens – detail votes
- Presenters describe each concept
- Everyone votes simultaneously
- Tally the votes
- Discuss what people voted for and why
- Helpful Hints:
- Use different colored sticky notes for detail votes
- Place detail token on specific detail of a concept
- Consider cumulative effect of detail votes
- Sample process:
- Purpose: Presenting new ideas, identifying best ones and developing these into detailed concepts
- Steps:
- Concept Poster (Making)
- Visualize the Vote (Understanding)
- Storyboarding (Making)
- School applications:
- Can be used as a tool to co-develop project calendars that involve multiple teachers
- Can be used as a tool to help students vote on classroom norms and policies that will create the classroom culture that they need to succeed
- Can be used as a tool to identify possible student preferences for upcoming project topics if you’re not sure which ones to develop into full blown projects
Identifying and leveraging patterns helps designers identify what are good ideas, how are ideas related and which ideas are important. There are numerous classroom applications for these strategies – see School Applications above.
Preparation Steps
- For teacher use (understanding students):
- Decide research topics (examples: possible project topics, potential classroom policies & norms, etc)
- Select method(s) that will help gather most useful information related to research topics
- For student use:
- Brainstorm research topics in projects that lend themselves to strategies aimed at identifying patterns & priorities
- Design resources that help students prepare and implement methods. See above.
Early Implementation Steps
- For teacher use (researching students):
- Implement selected strategies for understanding patterns & priorities.
- Follow up with more design steps. See above for ideas.
- For student use:
- Scaffold activities aimed at understanding patterns & priorities.
- Follow-up with more design activities. See hyperlinks above for ideas.
Advanced Implementation Steps
- For teacher use (understanding students):
- Share findings with students and have them reflect on whether or not the findings have any validity.
- Develop interventions, calendars, strategies, activities, and routines that address verified findings.
- For student use (understanding stakeholders for project):
- Have students reflect on strategies for understanding patterns & priorities. – how did it work? what assumptions were challenged? what new things were learned? what new ideas were inspired? how can this approach be used in other settings?
