Group Exercise
This works well with small groups. You can use flipcharts and sticky notes to do this if you are in a physical setting, or a virtual board with sticky notes if you are running an online session. Consider the size and needs of individuals group when deciding which format to use.
The Task
Pick an aspect or area and look at all of the quotes you have from the Discover Stage. To begin, lay out all of the quotes in no particular order, so everyone can see all of the information together, it will look something like this:
Then, look over all of the quotes, and think about what is coming up for you, what you are noticing. As you see connections and links, start to move the sticky notes around into themes. You can move things around as many times as you like so don’t worry too much about how you begin the exercise, just get started.
Talk to each other about what you are noticing as you move the sticky notes and gather them together. This will help others see different connections and will enable everyone to test and articulate the connections they are seeing.
This stage can be a bit messy and quite tricky, you will not get it right first time! It can take a few attempts to complete this, you may want to do it over the course of a few days so people can look at it and come back to it.
It will end up looking something like this:
It can take some time before everyone is happy with the themes you have identified.
Sometimes when you are working with the data and connecting the pieces, you will see a gap or realise that there is important data missing. When this happens, you many need to go back to the discover stage and gather more data, then bring it back to define.
Things to remember
A good theme will have 10-15 pieces of data, which will be connect through a shared meaning rather than just similar pieces of information.
If a theme has only 2 pieces of data, return the data to the main grouping to see if they belong to another group.
If a theme has a lot of data in it, you may need to analyse at a deeper level, is there more meaning that would break the data into a smaller group.
It is an iterative process!
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