Affinity Map

Synthesis · clustering observations into themes

After the interviews and surveys, I worked through every observation by hand and clustered by emotional pattern, then by frequency. Four themes emerged. Each one informed a downstream design decision — and together they made the original brief untenable.

Inputs5 long-form interviews

·30 survey responses

MethodManual clustering · frequency-weighted

Output4 themes → 1 insight

Theme 01 5/5 interviews · ~25/30 surveys

Mid-game alerts feel like backseat driving.

“Backseat driver” metaphor surfaced repeatedly — unprompted, multiple respondents

Players unanimously rejected any in-game prompt, even non-alert ones

Pausing mid-round was considered non-negotiable, especially in ranked play

InformedThe “silent adaptation” principle — no in-game UI at all

Theme 02 Secondary research · 5/5 interviews

Game rage is bigger than a single emotion.

Forum analysis exposed rage as tied to investment, public stakes, and in-game failure mechanics

“Different from outdoor sports — the rage has nowhere to go” (paraphrased, forum)

Players described stacking losses as the trigger, not single bad rounds

InformedStress treated as a continuous data layer, not a single-point alarm

Theme 03 4/5 interviews · ~22/30 surveys

Players want a performance edge, not therapy.

Wellness framing actively repelled the audience — “not for me”

Harnit (verbatim): “Stress is impacting my performance and personal life”

Help was welcome; being told to feel different was not

InformedPositioning: “Play Smarter. Adapt Faster.” — no wellness language

Theme 04 3/5 interviews + Harnit explicit

Trust comes from transparency, not invisibility.

“I’d let it do things if I knew what it did” (paraphrased pattern)

Privacy concerns about cloud-resident physiological data were unanimous

Players wanted a post-match review — the same data, on their terms

InformedOn-device compute · post-match disclosure layer (sketched)

Four themes

→ Silent adaptation principle
→ Stress as continuous data
→ Performance positioning
→ Transparency without intrusion

→

Consolidated into one principle

“Adapt, don’t interrupt.”

Six words that survived the rest of the build — every interface, every notification, every feature decision was tested against this rule. If a design broke it, it didn’t ship.

Dhruv Deva