# Affinity Diagram Sticky Notes: How to Run the Wall

Canonical: https://sakura5.app/blog/affinity-diagram-sticky-notes/  
Published: 2026-10-31  
Author: the Sakura5 team · 8 min read  
Updated: 2026-10-31  
Publisher: Sakura5 (https://sakura5.app) · support@sakura5.app

> **TL;DR:** How to make an affinity diagram with sticky notes: the supplies, note-writing rules and silent sorting steps, plus a worked example of 58 notes on one wall.

![Affinity Diagram Sticky Notes: How to Run the Wall](https://sakura5.app/img/blog/inline/affinity-diagram-sticky-notes-1.jpg)

To build an affinity diagram with sticky notes, write one idea per note in marker, put every note on a wall where everyone can see it, move them silently into clusters of related ideas, and only then write a header note for each cluster that says what its notes have in common. Sticky notes suit the method because each idea becomes a small object you can pick up and move, and moving is the whole job.

Most affinity sessions that go wrong don’t fail on theory. They fail on the physical details: notes that fall off the wall overnight, handwriting nobody can read from a metre away, five ideas crammed onto one square, a board photographed at an angle that makes half of it illegible. None of that sounds important until it ruins an afternoon of work.

This guide covers the supplies worth getting right, how to write notes that sort well, a step-by-step session, a worked example with real numbers, and how to get the finished wall into a form you can actually use the next day.

## Why sticky notes work for affinity diagrams (and where they fail)

An affinity diagram groups a large pile of ideas by natural similarity instead of by categories you chose in advance. The method goes back to Jiro Kawakita, which is why it’s also called the KJ method, and the American Society for Quality lists it among its [basic quality tools](https://asq.org/quality-resources/affinity). If you want the full reasoning behind sorting first and naming last, our guide on [how to use an affinity diagram to group ideas](https://sakura5.app/blog/how-to-use-an-affinity-diagram-to-group-ideas/) walks through it. This post is about doing it with paper.

Sticky notes earn their place for three reasons:

- **One idea, one object.** A note can only hold so much, which forces people to split compound thoughts. That makes sorting honest.
- **Moving is cheap.** Anyone can lift a note and put it somewhere else without asking permission or editing a file. That’s what makes silent sorting possible in a group.
- **The whole set is visible.** A wall shows sixty notes at once. A laptop screen usually shows a fraction of that.

They also have real weaknesses. Notes curl and drop, especially on painted walls and in warm rooms. A wall can’t be searched, can’t be undone, and can’t travel home with you. And once the session ends, someone has to turn the wall into something digital, which is the step most teams skip and then regret.

## Supplies and setup that save you an hour

You don’t need much, but the small choices matter more than you’d expect.

- **Square notes, around 76 mm (3 inches).** Big enough for one full sentence, small enough that nobody writes a paragraph. Smaller notes push people into single words, which sort badly.
- **Extra-sticky or full-adhesive notes** if the session runs longer than an hour or the wall stays up overnight.
- **Fine felt-tip markers, not ballpoint pens.** Ballpoint is unreadable from a step back, and in group sorting people read notes from a step back.
- **One colour for ideas, a different colour for headers.** If you colour-code ideas by source or person, people tend to sort by colour instead of meaning. Keep raw ideas all the same colour.
- **A large flat surface.** A whiteboard, a window or a roll of brown paper taped to the wall. Brown paper has a bonus: you can roll the whole diagram up and keep it.

Before anyone writes, agree on one rule out loud: one idea per note, written as a short sentence. “Onboarding” is a topic. “I didn’t realise I could skip the tutorial” is an idea, and only ideas sort well.

## How to run an affinity diagram with sticky notes, step by step

### 1. Write the notes before anyone touches the wall

Give everyone 10 to 15 minutes to write their notes alone. Writing in silence avoids the first idea anchoring everyone else’s. If you’re working from research, interviews or survey answers, one person can transcribe, keeping the source’s own words where they can.

![How to run an affinity diagram with sticky notes, step by step — affinity diagram sticky notes](https://sakura5.app/img/blog/inline/affinity-diagram-sticky-notes-2.jpg)

*Give everyone 10 to 15 minutes to write their notes alone.*

### 2. Put every note up at random

Stick the notes up in no particular order, spread out with gaps between them. Then have everyone read the whole wall once before moving anything, so the first cluster isn’t built around whichever note happened to be at eye level.

### 3. Sort silently

Everyone moves notes at the same time, without talking. Put two related notes next to each other, then add more. If you disagree with where a note sits, move it. If a note gets moved back and forth more than twice, write a duplicate and put one in each cluster. Silence matters most here: as soon as people explain their reasoning, the most confident voice starts deciding the categories.

### 4. Leave the loners alone

Notes that don’t fit anywhere stay on their own. Don’t push them into the nearest group to make the wall look tidy. A loner is sometimes the most useful note on the wall.

### 5. Write header notes in the second colour

When movement has mostly stopped, talking is allowed again. For each cluster, the group writes a header note in the second colour, as a full statement: “New users don’t know the free plan has a limit,” not “Pricing.” If one sentence can’t cover every note underneath, split the cluster.

### 6. Group the headers, then photograph everything

Move related headers near each other and add a top-level header if a bigger theme shows up. Then, before anyone leaves, photograph the wall straight on, one cluster per photo, close enough that every note is readable. One wide shot of the whole wall is never enough.

## A worked example: 58 notes from a library user survey

Say you’re Tomas, who runs digital services for a small public library. A survey asked members one open question: “What would make you visit more often?” You got 41 written answers, and three colleagues have 45 minutes on a Thursday afternoon.

![A worked example: 58 notes from a library user survey — affinity diagram sticky notes](https://sakura5.app/img/blog/inline/affinity-diagram-sticky-notes-3.jpg)

*Say you’re Tomas, who runs digital services for a small public library.*

**Minutes 0–12.** Each person takes a share of the answers and writes notes, one idea per note. Several answers contain two ideas, so 41 answers become 58 yellow notes.

**Minutes 12–15.** All 58 go up at random on a sheet of brown paper. Everyone reads the whole wall once.

**Minutes 15–30.** Silent sorting. Pairs form fast: two notes about the printer, three about not knowing events exist. By minute 30 there are 9 clusters and 4 loners. One note, “I can’t bring my toddler in the quiet hours,” gets moved four times, so it’s duplicated.

**Minutes 30–40.** Header notes go up on pink notes. Examples: “People only hear about events after they’ve happened” (11 notes), “Opening hours clash with work” (9 notes), “Families aren’t sure when kids are welcome” (7 notes). One cluster won’t take a single sentence and becomes two, giving 10 headers.

**Minutes 40–45.** Headers are grouped into three themes — *We’re invisible*, *We’re closed when people are free* and *The space doesn’t suit families* — and Tomas photographs each cluster on his phone.

The useful finding: the team had planned to ask for a budget increase for new books. Not one cluster was about the collection. The biggest theme was that people didn’t know what was already happening, which costs almost nothing to fix.

## Turning the wall into something you can use

Sticky notes are a great sorting surface and a poor storage format. By Monday, a few notes have fallen, the cleaner has tidied the whiteboard, and the photos are buried in someone’s camera roll. The fix is to transcribe the result while it’s fresh, and the right shape for it is a mind map: the question in the centre, themes as main branches, headers as sub-branches, and the original notes as leaves.

Typing that structure out is the slow part. In [Mindmap AI](https://sakura5.app/mindmapai/), you can type or paste the header statements and notes as plain text and, with MindMap Pro, have the AI build an organised first draft of the map on an infinite canvas. Check the draft against your photos: the wall is the source of truth, so drag any misplaced note back to the branch the group chose and keep the headers in the group’s exact words.

From there you can view the map as a collapsible outline for a report, sync it to your iPhone, iPad and Mac through your own iCloud, or export it as a PDF outline to share with the people who weren’t in the room. If the next step is planning work from the themes, our guide to [turning meeting notes into action items](https://sakura5.app/blog/how-to-organize-meeting-notes-into-action-items/) picks up where the wall leaves off. [Mindmap AI](https://sakura5.app/mindmapai/) is free to try with three saved maps, no account needed.

## FAQ

**How many sticky notes do you need for an affinity diagram?**

Fewer than about 20 notes rarely needs the method, because you can sort them in your head. Somewhere between 30 and 100 notes is where it works well. Past roughly 150, split the session, sort each half separately, then combine the header notes in a second round so the wall stays readable and nobody gets lost.

**Should I use different coloured sticky notes for different ideas?**

No. Keep every raw idea the same colour and use a second colour only for the header notes. If ideas are colour-coded by person, team or source, people tend to sort by colour rather than by meaning, which brings back the top-down categories the affinity diagram is designed to avoid. Track sources with initials on the note instead.

**Can you make an affinity diagram with sticky notes remotely?**

Yes. Online whiteboards offer digital sticky notes that behave much like paper ones, and the same rules apply: one idea per note, silent sorting, headers written last. Ask everyone to keep their microphone muted during sorting, and give each person a few minutes alone to add notes before the group starts moving anything.

**What do you do with an affinity diagram after the session?**

Photograph each cluster straight on, then transcribe the headers and notes into a digital format the same day, before notes fall off or memories fade. A mind map works well because it keeps the hierarchy of themes, headers and notes. Finish by deciding what each top-level theme means: a fix, a question to research or a section of a report.

About the app: [MindMap AI: Mind Map Maker](https://sakura5.app/mindmapai/) · App Store: https://sakura5.app/go/mindmapai?from=/blog/affinity-diagram-sticky-notes/