# Notes, affinity mapping and working as a team

> Why customer learning must not live in one head, how to prep and review as a team, take interview notes with quotes and symbols, turn them into patterns with affinity mapping, spot a ritual that teaches nothing, and a recap of the whole course.

- Course: [Customer Development: Talking to Customers](https://productovi.com/courses/customer-interviews.md)
- Module: The process
- Lesson 15/15, ~42 min
- Source: https://productovi.com/courses/customer-interviews/notes-and-synthesis

## “Because the customers said so”

**Alex Tutor:** Morning on CatChow's product team, where you've started passing interview findings to the developers. Today: interview notes the team can trust, and how to turn them into patterns.

**Sofia:** Awkward morning. I told the developers to add “pause delivery” because customers want it. Max, our tech lead, asked who exactly said that and what they said. I had nothing to show him.

**Alex Tutor:** Where are your notes from the last twelve conversations?

**Sofia:** Mostly in my head. A few lines in my phone.

**Alex Tutor:** That's a **learning bottleneck**: everything the company knows about customers lives in one person. Then “the customers said so” turns into an order nobody can check.

![One person squeezes a huge bundle of speech bubbles through the narrow neck of a bottle while teammates wait on the other side.](https://productovi.com/courses/customer-interviews/inline/notes-and-synthesis-illustration-2.webp)

*If the notes live in one head, the team can only obey or ignore.*

**Alex Tutor:** The team can only obey or ignore you, and both are bad. Even if you're right, they can't see why. It can come from the other side too: a team that refuses to hear customers at all.

> **Exercise:** Which phrases are signs of a learning bottleneck? Select all that apply.

## Prep as a team

**Alex Tutor:** The cure has three parts: prep together, take good notes, review together. Let's start with **conversation prep**.

**Alex Tutor:** It's short: thirty minutes, not a strategy week. Agree on your **3 big questions**, write down best guesses about the customer, and decide what commitment you'll ask for at the end.

**Alex Tutor:** Bring both sides: product and business. Otherwise nobody asks what the missing side needs to know. And anything you can google, google first. Face time is for what the internet can't tell you.

**Sofia:** So the core question of prep is simply: what do we want to learn from these people?

**Alex Tutor:** Exactly. If you can't answer it, skip the conversation.

> **Exercise:** Sofia is preparing for a conversation with a clinic owner. Which question should she answer with desk research instead of asking in the meeting?

## The sceptical teammate

**Sofia:** Max says interviews are a waste and we should just build a good product. How do I get him into prep?

**Alex Tutor:** Don't argue. His doubt is fair if past conversations were full of compliments. Ask for ten minutes to help pick the questions, especially the ones that matter to engineering.

**Alex Tutor:** Once a conversation saves the team a week of building the wrong thing, you won't need to invite him twice.

**Sofia:** I'll write to him now.

> **Exercise:** Write Sofia's short message to Max, who thinks customer interviews are a waste of time. Invite him into prep without arguing.

## Who goes to the conversation

**Megan:** My sales reps could run all the interviews for you. They talk to clinics anyway.

**Alex Tutor:** They can help set them up. But people who make product decisions have to hear customers themselves, at least sometimes. Bad news from someone else is too easy to dismiss.

**Alex Tutor:** The ideal team is two people: one talks, one takes notes and notices when the other starts pitching or misses a signal. Three people facing one customer feels like an interrogation.

**Sofia:** Then Max takes notes at the clinic on Thursday.

> **Exercise:** The best setup for a customer conversation is three or four team members, so everyone hears the customer first-hand.

## How to take interview notes that survive the meeting

**Alex Tutor:** Now the notes. Write down the customer's exact words in quotation marks whenever you can. A **verbatim quote** is evidence for Max and ready-made copy for Megan's landing page.

**Alex Tutor:** Then tag each line with a mark, so you can sort notes later. These **note-taking symbols** are ours; invent your own if you like:

**Alex Tutor:** `!` pain or problem, `~` **workaround**, `#` **obstacle**, `₴` money or budget, `@` a named person or company, `?` a feature request to dig into, `>>` next step, and `+` or `−` for strong emotion.

![An open notebook page with wavy lines of notes, each starting with a small coloured icon: a lightning bolt, a wrench, a coin, a person.](https://productovi.com/courses/customer-interviews/inline/notes-and-synthesis-illustration-3.webp)

**Sofia:** Why mark emotion separately?

**Alex Tutor:** “It's a problem” said calmly and said with anger are two different findings. A pain with `−` next to it weighs more.

> **Interview notes template**
>
> **Who, where, when:** name, role, segment; the place or channel; date; who took notes.
>
> **Our 3 big questions** for this batch of conversations.
>
> **Notes:** one fact per line, the customer's exact words in quotes, and one symbol at the start: `!` pain, `~` workaround, `#` obstacle, `₴` money, `@` person or company, `?` feature request, `>>` next step, `+` or `−` strong emotion.
>
> **Commitment:** what we asked for and what we got.
>
> **After the call:** what surprised us and which belief changes.

> **Exercise:** Match each note from Sofia's conversations to the symbol it should get.

## Cleaning up a messy note

**Sofia:** Here's how Olivia's call started yesterday. And I wrote down only: “Olivia likes the idea, buying food is annoying, wants discounts.”

**Olivia:** Last month I ran out on a Sunday again. I drove to three shops, and the third only had small bags, so I paid almost double.

**Olivia:** Now I have a phone reminder every three weeks. Honestly, I still forget. My sister laughs at me.

**Alex Tutor:** Your note has one opinion and two interpretations. Where are the three shops, the double price, the reminder that fails? That's the gold.

**Alex Tutor:** Start with Olivia. Here are four ways to write down what she said. Which line is worth keeping?

> **Exercise:** Which line from Olivia's call is the best note?

**Sofia:** So the line about three shops and the double price stays, word for word.

**Alex Tutor:** Yes. And the phone reminder gets a `~`: it's her workaround, and it fails. That tells the team more than “buying food is annoying”.

**Sofia:** Okay. Now Tom.

**Alex Tutor:** Same with Tom. You told me his whole story, but your note just says “ordering is a pain”. Try again, with quotes and symbols.

> **Exercise:** Sofia's raw memory of the talk with Tom: ordering diet food is “a nightmare every week”; the supplier wants at least 30 bags; the owner, Natalie, decides what to stock; clients go to other clinics when the shelf is empty; Tom will show her the order sheet next Tuesday; he thinks a subscription for clinics “could be interesting”. Rewrite it as 4–6 note lines with quotes where possible and our symbols.

## Review and synthesis: affinity mapping

**Alex Tutor:** Notes nobody looks at are useless. So after conversations comes **conversation review**: a quick debrief the same day and a longer look at all notes once a week.

**Alex Tutor:** In the review, update your beliefs and your three big questions. And discuss the craft: which questions worked, where you slipped into pitching, what signal you missed.

**Alex Tutor:** Then **synthesis**: put notes from many conversations side by side and look for patterns. Pull out every `!` line, group similar ones, count how many people said the same thing.

> **Affinity mapping**
>
> **Affinity mapping** is a way to synthesise many interviews at once. Each observation or quote goes on its own card. Put all the cards side by side, move similar ones into groups, name each group and count how many people are in it. The biggest groups with the strongest emotion are your patterns.

![A small team sticks notes from many conversations on a wall and gathers the matching orange ones into one cluster.](https://productovi.com/courses/customer-interviews/inline/notes-and-synthesis-illustration-4.webp)

*A decision should rest on a pattern, not on the loudest customer.*

**Sofia:** So a decision comes from a pattern, not from one customer who said it loudly.

**Alex Tutor:** Right. And post the quotes in a shared channel right after each talk. Then Max sees what you saw.

**Alex Tutor:** Try it. Here are two updates you could post after today's calls. Which one would convince Max?

> **Exercise:** After three calls with owners of diet cats, Sofia posts an update for Max in the team channel. Which one lets the team judge for itself?

> **Exercise:** In a review of six conversations with owners of diet cats, five notes say food ran out at a weekend (three with `−`), and one says “add cat photos to the app”. What is the best conclusion?

## An affinity map example

**Alex Tutor:** Here's what that review of six owners of diet cats looks like on a wall: one card per `!` line or `?` request, grouped and counted.

> **Affinity map: six owners of diet cats**
>
> **Food runs out at a weekend:** 5 of 6 people (83%), 3 of the 5 cards marked `−`.
> Cards: the clinic is closed on Sunday; the pet shop doesn't stock the diet; the phone reminder came too late.
>
> **Add cat photos to the app:** 1 of 6 people (17%), no emotion marked.
> Card: a `?` feature request, not dug into yet.
>
> **Next question for the team:** what did the five do when the food ran out, and what did it cost them?

**Alex Tutor:** Five cards out of six, three of them angry: that's the pattern. The cat-photo card isn't wrong, it's just alone. Two more interviews will show whether it grows into a group or stays a one-off.

**Sofia:** So a decision needs a group, not a card. And the group names go into the shared table for Max.

**Alex Tutor:** Exactly. Now put the steps of building such a map in order.

> **Exercise:** Put the steps of building an affinity map in order.

## Going through the motions

**Megan:** My team did ten calls this week and logged them all in the CRM. Great result, right?

**Alex Tutor:** Depends. Talking to customers is a tool, not a ritual. Did your reps talk more than the customers? Did they hear compliments and describe the idea?

**Alex Tutor:** Other signs: no next steps, no notes or notes nobody reviewed, a surprising answer that changed nothing, no question that felt scary, and no clear idea of what they wanted to learn.

**Megan:** Hmm. Most calls ended with “great, send us the info”.

> **Exercise:** Megan's weekly report says the following. Which lines are signs of going through the motions? Select all that apply.

## Before, during, after

**Alex Tutor:** Put it all together. Before a batch of conversations: a focused who-where segment, three big questions chosen with the team, best guesses, the commitment to ask for, desk research done.

**Alex Tutor:** During: frame it, keep it casual, follow the rules for honest answers, deflect compliments, anchor fluff, dig, take notes, push for a next step.

**Alex Tutor:** After: review notes and quotes with the team, move them somewhere permanent, update beliefs, pick the next three big questions. An hour of prep and a week or two of talks, not months.

![Each batch of conversations: prepare together before, follow the honest-answer rules during, review as a team after and pick the next three big questions.](https://productovi.com/courses/customer-interviews/diagrams/m5-l3-before-during-after.png)

**Sofia:** Next week we have six conversations: three owners, three clinics. Let me plan the process.

> **Exercise:** Plan how CatChow's team runs next week's six conversations.

## Looking back at the course

**Sofia:** When I started, my plan was to ask twenty people whether they liked the subscription.

**Alex Tutor:** And now? Tell me what you'd do differently, module by module.

**Sofia:** Talk about their life, not my idea, and ask about past specifics. Deflect compliments, anchor fluff, dig beneath feature requests. Ask the scary questions and keep it casual.

**Sofia:** Trust commitment, not “sounds great”, and always push for a next step. Find people through warm intros, slice the segment until I know where they are, and share notes with the team.

**Alex Tutor:** That's the whole course. You'll still ask bad questions sometimes, everyone does. Review, laugh, fix the next one. And don't let the process become the goal: sometimes the fastest learning is just calling the clinic.

**Tom:** By the way, Natalie asked when you're coming back. She wants to show you last month's orders.

**Sofia:** Next steps, then: Tuesday with Natalie and Max, three owners on Wednesday and Thursday, review on Friday. And from now on every quote goes in the shared table.

> **Course cheat sheet**
>
> - **Honest answers**: talk about their life, ask about past specifics, listen more than you talk.
> - **Bad data**: deflect compliments, anchor fluff, dig beneath feature requests.
> - **What matters**: ask the scary questions, prepare your 3 big questions, keep it casual.
> - **Commitment**: time, reputation or money, plus a concrete next step. “Keep me posted” is not a lead.
> - **Finding people**: warm intros, communities, bringing them to you; a five-part meeting request.
> - **Slicing**: a who-where pair you can reach this week; talk to every side of the purchase.
> - **Process**: prep together, go in pairs, take notes with quotes and symbols, review and group them into patterns with affinity mapping.
> - **The prep question**: what do we want to learn from these people?

**Alex Tutor:** Now go and talk to someone. Not tomorrow, today.

- Previous lesson: [Customer slicing: how to define your target customer](https://productovi.com/courses/customer-interviews/customer-slicing.md)

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