research-synthesislisted

# Research Synthesis ## Coverage Research synthesis covers the methods that turn raw qualitative material into structured insight a team can act on. The canonical technique is **affinity mapping** (Jiro Kawakita's KJ method), where individual observations are written on cards or sticky notes, posted on a wall, and clustered bottom-up into emergent themes — without imposing pre-existing categories. Adjacent methods include **empathy mapping** (XPLANE / Dave Gray, "Say / Think / Do / Feel" quadrants), **insight statement** writing (a tension or surprise condensed into one sentence), **jobs-to-be-done synthesis** (extracting the functional, emotional, and social jobs a user is hiring a product to do), and **persona drafting** when patterns are stable enough to warrant archetypes. The skill includes the mechanics of **downloading research** — getting raw observations off transcripts and onto a shared surface (physical wall or digital board) as atomic units, one observation per card, in the participant's words where possible. This is the unglamorous part of the work and it is non-negotiable: themes that emerge from a wall of evidence are defensible; themes that emerge from memory or impression are not. The practice distinguishes **descriptive themes** (what we heard) from **interpretive insights** (what it means) from **point-of-view statements** (what we will act on). Each layer requires the previous one as evidence. A common synthesis output is a small set of insight statemen