Amanda Visconti (University of Maryland), who recently posted about her digital dissertation, “Infinite Ulysses,” has written a post introducing the organizational technique of affinity mapping. She explains:
It’s a way to take a bunch of separate ideas and visually map out how they’re related (thus, “affinity”); this helps your areas of focus (or paper section headings) rise organically out of an overview of all the things you want to cover, rather than being pushed onto the ideas from the top down.
Visconti also explains how she used the technique to help structure an academic journal article based on her dissertation project.
