My God we created 1000 Post-its what is the next steps to make sense of so much creativity?

The two things moderators fear when running a workshop are

1. What if we don't have any results at the end of the workshop
2. What if we have to many contributions what shall I do with all that information.

This article explains how to tackle the second situation where you create a massive amount of contributions for example in the workshop posted in the header image we had 20 interviews with more than 750 individual contributions.

On the one hand having such a massive result is fantastic but it also creates a problem when you have the task to convert all those insights into a consulting recommendation and craft a proposal for your client.

The question is: how convert all those post-its into a meaningful result for your customer and at the same time avoid losing the context and overview.

Losing tractability and context are the two big challenges

When you are precenting your results to your client you are in danger of loosing the traceability and not being able to explain how you came to your recommendation. If you have only a view results the connection is often obvious. If you have many results there are to many options and you could essentially prove almost any argument you want make pointing to any single information share in your workshop.

You want to be sure you have well founded arguments and also ensure they are related to the content discussed and discovered in a workshop and the most compelling argument for a manager is always a statement that comes from his/her employee rather than a consultant simply claiming this or that might be true.

In order to verify your recommendations with direct input from workshop participants you need to tag each post-it to ensure you know from which workshops it came and if you then know who participated in each workshop you have a direct link between every statement and the group of people who participated.

The ultimate goal here is to ensure you know where the information

came from and the context when the statement was made.

If your client is in doubt and is not sure you got this right" you can point him/her to the workshop and your answer is: "We discussed this with the HR department on June 15th". Next, managers might ask who attended the workshop and once you share the names of the participants the answer is mostly something like: "Ok if .... was participating I trust this information is correct and valid".

Step 01# Use Post-It colors to identify each workshop

You can use Post-it colors to map each post-it to a an individual workshop. This is done as follows

1. Select the "Option icon" in the bottom left corner
2. Select the "Colors option" in the dialog
3. Add or delete "Colors" and give them proper names
4. Select all Post-its in one workshop and assign the correct color.

After completing this exercise you will have all Post-its from one workshop in one color and can later find out which Post-It came from which workshop.

Step #02 - Use categories to assignee workshop parts to post-its

Obviously the question you are asking and the context will frame the answer and to interpret an answer correct you need to know from which part of the workshop it originates. You can use categories to link those answers to different parts of your workshop. In Klaxoon you can use the category feature to create this traceability:

1. Select the "Options Icon" on the bottom right corner
2. Select the "Categories option" in the dialog
3. Then "Add and remove categories" with names that represent workshop parts

Step #03 - Assign each post-it the correct category and color

You can use the Multi-select icon" in the bottom left corner and select all post-its you want to tag. Next you select the color that represents the workshop and category that tells you which section of the workshop the post-it comes from.

1. Select the "Multi-Select Icon" a right square in the bottom left corner
2. Select multiple icons and click on the "Tag Selector" for the group
3. Next select the "Color Selector" for the group

With this operation you can assign the same category and post-it color to all post-its you selected with two clicks.

Step #04 - Checking if you got it right

As argued on the top your goal is to make each workshop statement tracible so you know who made the statement and also understand the context when the contribution was shared. Once you have completed the exercise each post-it contains the information you need to trace it to its origin for example:

• Post-it one: Comes from Workshop 03 and section 01 Production
• Post-it two: Comes from Workshop 02 and section 05 How to access help
• Post-it three: Comes from Workshop 03 and section 01 Top Priorities

Your takeaway from this activity. Now you can trace each post-it to its origin.

Step #05 - Preparing post-its to populate the affinity diagram

The Affinity diagram allows you to look for common digital themes so you can start thinking about the digital product or service you want to create for your client. The first step here is to copy all post-its to the affinity diagram. Place them above the affinity diagram and arrange them to make your next step easier.

As you can see those 350+ Post-its take up much space and it will be hard and tiresome to navigate on the canvas. You will have to zoom in to read the post-it and then zoom out in order to move it to the desired category. Therefor nicely aligning them to save as much space as possible makes it easier for you to do the affinity clustering in the next step.

Step #06 - Arranging post-its to save space.

When working with massive number of post-its one a digital canvas you always have the problem that you need to zoom in to be able to read the post-it content but you need to zoom out in order to find the category for your Affinity diagram and to make this as easy as possible it's helpful to arange those post-its in nice rows to reduce the amount of zooming and paining you need to do for this exercise.

1. Click the "Multi-Select Icon" in the bottom left corner and select multiple post-its
2. Click the "Arange Object Icon" from the selected group
3. Click the "Arange Horizontally" to nicely align all post-its in one row

After you selected this option you will see all Post-its are strung out in one nice horizontal line. The last thing you need to do is to cut this long line into parts that roughly fit the length of your affinity diagram.

Step #07 - Populate the affinity diagram

Now the actual hard work starts because you need to read each of those 350+ Post-its thing about the workshop context and use your brain to think about a category you want to place the post-it. Obviously you have to do this for each of your 350+ Post-It and this will easily take you 2-3 hours if done properly.

There is an alternative where you can make this a group exercise inviting fellow consultants and then you can manage this amount of Post-its in probably 45 to 60 minutes. There are multiple benefits in involving the account team or fellow consultants to this exercise. You will:

1. Increase the quality of your consultant work
2. You will get more divers perspectives
3. You will be able to discuss with group members
4. You will be finished in much less time

Invite colleagues and experts to join the affinity diagram session and get the job done in 45 - 60 minutes.

Step 08# - Ensure the Affinity Diagram is large enough.

Ensure the image is large enough to put all Post-its in one category. You can simply calculate the number of Post-Its by the category. In this case I prepared 24 categories and with 350+ Post-Its each Affinity Diagram segment will need to cover about 15 Post-its. You can resize the images later on or reduce the size of the Post-its but take a good guess before you start.

1. "Move Icon
2. Enable "Drawings, images, shapes"
3. Select "The Affinity Diagram images"
4. Resize them to approximately fit the number of Post-Its you expect for each category
5. Don't forget to "Disable the drawing, images, shape" move function

Step #09 - How to use the Affinity Diagram to categorize Post-its

The idea behind the Affinity Diagram is to find common themes from your contributions. This is done by first reading the statement on the Post-it and then thinking about what digital theme fits to the content. Then you crate the Affinity Category and add the Post-it to that category.

1. Select any Post-it outside the Affinity Diagram
2. Read the content
3. Think of the category and digital theme it could fit into
4. Create the Affinity category and assign it to one Affinity Diagram section
5. Place the Post-it the respective Affinity Diagram section
6. Get your next Post-it

Continue this activity until all 350+ Post-its have been assigned to one Affinity Diagram category. Repeat this for process for each Post-it until all Post-its have been moved from the outside the Affinity Diagram to one of the Affinity Diagram categories.

Step 10# - Tips for group working exercise with Affinity Diagrams

As mentioned above reading all of those 350+ Post-its will take time and asking colleagues or the account team to help you has several benefits.

1. You will be able to complete the exercise in a fraction of the time
2. You will get the expertise of the entire team you involve
3. You will be able to discuss and make a sanity check to ensure consistency

For this exercise there is no right or wrong it's you or your team that is creating a consulting product and using your experience and know-how to create meaningful categories that help shape the digital solution you are proposing to your client.

If done as a group exercise the rules are as follows.

1. Anybody can create a new category
2. Each post-it that has been moved inside the Affinity Diagram is not touched by others
3. After all Post-its have been moved each category is discussed with the group
4. The exercise is complete when the group agrees all post-its are in the correct category

Tip: don't make it a religious discussion follow your guts feelings when creating categories and assigning Post-its. Trust your consultants experience and when it feels right it is right.

Step 11# Creating the three horizon vision plan for your project

As so often in live the final step is the most fun and most creative part of your job. Because now after you have created those Affinity categories you can now populate the three horizon map and think about those digital themes and which of them are more fundamental compared to the more visionary future goals for your application or solution you are consulting your customer on.

Step #12 - Double checking if your advise is correct

I won't go into all details how to convert the Affinity Diagram into a three horizon map but I hope you got the idea how you can tackle the problem of converting a huge amount of workshop results into a product or vision for your customer.

The important thing is you can double check each of your statements and trace them back to the original workshop artifact and person who made the statement which ensures you are not being bias and are building your recommendations on workshop inputs and not on wishful thinking

If you like this article and want to learn more about Design thinking

1. Join Billboard Design Thinking LinkedIn group: (99+) Billboard Design Thinking | Groups | LinkedIn . As Always I will publish the templates for download in the
2. Check out the Billboard Design Thinking Moderator Training book available on Kindle Amazon.com: Billboard Design Thinking Moderator Training: How to start a career as Design Thinking moderator eBook : Mc Guire, Sean, Schokman, Bernard: Kindle Store