From notes to findings
🎯You'll be able to
Group observations into findings using tags or affinity mapping, and state each finding with its evidence.
🏠The everyday picture
After a family wedding, the cousins compare stories: "the food ran out", "the second batch of food was late", "the caterer was short of staff". Three stories, one finding: the caterer didn't have enough capacity.
📘What it really is
- An observation is one thing one person did or said: "P2 asked whether the grey or the white slot was selected."
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A finding is a pattern across observations, with a cause where you can see it: "People couldn't tell which time was chosen, because the selected slot was only a slightly different grey."
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Tagging: give each observation a short tag (
[slot-picker]) while taking notes or straight after; then group by tag. -
Affinity mapping: write each observation on a sticky note (or a digital board), then move similar ones together and name the groups. Useful when there are no tags yet, or to find patterns the tags missed.
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Evidence: list the participants who showed each finding, and keep one or two quotes. Every finding should be traceable back to the notes.
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Separate observation from interpretation. "P1 tapped twice" is an observation; "P1 didn't trust the screen" is an interpretation. Both are useful, as long as you say which is which.
📝A worked example
Input: the five session notes in research/sessions/.
grep -ho '\[[a-z-]*\]' research/sessions/*.md | sort | uniq -c
Expected output:
3 [error-colour]
1 [jargon]
3 [no-back]
2 [no-results]
1 [phone-shown]
2 [placeholder-label]
4 [slot-picker]
2 [small-targets]
Then list who showed each one, for example grep -l 'slot-picker' research/sessions/*.md gives P1, P2, P4 and P5. These become the
Evidence column of research/findings.md.
🌍Where it's used
- Agencies run affinity sessions with the client's team so everyone sees the evidence.
- Product teams keep a research repository where each finding links to its clips and notes.
- Accessibility audits group issues by type before prioritising them.
📝Case scenario
A team reported "users hate the new menu". A reviewer asked for the evidence. Two of six participants had said they disliked it; four had used it without trouble. The finding was rewritten as "2 of 6 preferred the old menu; none failed a task because of it", and the team stopped planning a redesign.
🖱️Try it
Read research/sessions/P2.md and P4.md. Write each observation as one line and say whether it's an observation or an interpretation.
Success: at least six lines, each traceable to a timestamp.
⚠️Common mistakes
- Findings without evidence. Sign: no participant IDs. Fix: list who showed it, and a quote.
- Counting the wrong thing. Sign: four observations by one person counted as "four users". Fix: count participants, not lines.
- Mixing observation and opinion. Sign: "users were frustrated" with nothing that shows it. Fix: write what they did or said.
🛠️For your project
Project 1's test 5 checks that each finding's Evidence lists exactly the participants whose notes carry its tag.
✅Quick check
What's the difference between an observation and a finding?
Show the answer
An observation is one thing one person did or said; a finding is a pattern across observations, ideally with its cause.
When counting a problem, what do you count?
Show the answer
Participants who met it, not the number of note lines.