An Affinity Diagram is a tool that gathers large amounts of language data (ideas, opinions, issues) and organizes them into groupings based on their natural relationships. It is one of the “Seven Management and Planning Tools” and is often used to group ideas generated by brainstorming [1]. The Affinity Diagram is an easy tool to get people to work on a creative level to address difficult issues. It may be used in situations that are unknown or unexplored by a team, or in circumstances that seem confusing or disorganized, such as when people with diverse experiences form a new team, or when members have incomplete knowledge of the area of analysis [2]. Although humans have been grouping data into groups based on natural relationships for thousands of years [1], the term affinity diagram was created in 1960 by anthropologist Jiro Kawakita [3].
