From Sticky Notes to Strategy

Three hours, a fresh FigJam wall, and a pile of sticky notes, that’s when Empathy Quest finally clicked. We kept peeling, grouping, and regrouping every line from two interviews until the chaos collapsed into one clear story: moms feel PMAD’s weight, but supporters hold the keys to action. That single pattern trimmed weeks of guess-work and steered every sketch toward the people who can help first.

Project at a glance

Element	Detail
Brief	Explore VR as a medium to raise awareness of Perinatal Mood & Anxiety Disorders (PMAD).
Team	Four graduate designers, a limited grant budget, VR requirement set by the sponsor.
Primary research	180 + minutes of one-on-one interviews with moms who had experienced PMAD.
Secondary research	Clinical papers and nonprofit reports on PMAD prevalence, treatment gaps, and caregiver roles.

Without a synthesis method, we were drowning in fragments, quotes, statistics, and literature highlights. Decisions stalled because patterns remained invisible.

Turning noise into insight

Step	Action	Why it mattered
Sticky-note dump	Each interview line and research fact went on its own note, color-coded by source.	One idea per note keeps bias out and patterns visible.
Silent clustering	Team members grouped notes independently, then compared overlaps out loud.	Rapid consensus and blind-spot exposure.
SME sweep	A clinical mentor re-clustered borderline notes for medical accuracy.	Confirms clinical relevance and adds nuance.
Rename + merge	Eight clear buckets emerged, all centred on moments that impact moms.	Shared vocabulary for every later sketch and story.

Final Version

The pivot it unlocked

Affinity mapping surfaced an unmissable pattern: moms bear PMAD’s weight, yet they are rarely in a position to fix it. Partners, friends, and relatives notice early cues and have the bandwidth to intervene.

Shifts that followed

• Narrative perspective: story frameworks rewrote scenes from a supporter’s point of view.

• Interaction focus: decision-based scenarios where users practice spotting PMAD signs and choosing actions.

• Stakeholder momentum: Eli Lilly requested an informal follow-up to explore the supporter-first angle.

Validation checklist

• Each cluster is backed by at least two data points (interview notes or study).

• Pain points paired with a specific action a supporter can take.

• Clinical mentor signed off on final theme names.

Closing thought

Affinity Mapping turned scattered stories into a decisive narrative, exposed who could truly help, and spared the team from investing in a solution moms might never use. All it took was one disciplined afternoon of making the invisible visible.

Read the full case study: Empathy Quest on my portfolio