Ten customer interviews, one affinity map, zero sticky-note marathons

Why now

• The Figma MCP server can now write to FigJam. Its use_figma tool creates and edits stickies, sections, connectors and shapes on boards, and generate_diagram makes FigJam flowcharts from a description. (Figma MCP tools)
• Granola's MCP server includes raw transcripts on Business, so quotes come out verbatim rather than paraphrased by a summary. (Granola MCP)
• Claude Code can hold both connections in one session, with Figma's official plugin and Granola's remote MCP. (Figma + Claude Code)

The analysis has always been the valuable part. Copying 300 quotes onto stickies was the part nobody wanted to do.

Who it's for

Anyone running a round of 5–20 interviews who wants the synthesis workshop to start from an organized board rather than a blank one.

What you get

• A FigJam board with one section per theme. Every sticky is a verbatim quote, colored by participant, with the interview and timestamp in the sticky.
• A "contradictions" section for quotes that cut against the main themes, on purpose.
• A journey flowchart of the process customers described, generated as a FigJam diagram.
• A findings.md in your repo or folder with themes, counts and quote references.

You'll need

Setup

1. Run the interviews in Granola (ongoing)

Record each interview with Granola (with consent; see Gotchas) and put them all in one folder, e.g. Discovery – Q4 onboarding. Title each note P01 – <role> – <company type> so participants stay anonymous on the board.

2. Connect both servers to Claude Code (Claude Code, 10 min)

claude plugin install figma@claude-plugins-official
claude mcp add granola --transport http https://mcp.granola.ai/mcp

Start claude, run /mcp, and complete both OAuth sign-ins. Ask Use Figma whoami to confirm the plan and seat you're writing with.

3. Extract the quotes (Claude Code, 15 min)

Work in an empty folder so outputs land as files:

From my Granola folder "Discovery – Q4 onboarding", read every transcript.
Extract atomic observations: one quote per observation, verbatim, 1–3 sentences,
with participant code (from the note title), timestamp, and a short neutral label.
Skip small talk and my own questions. Save as quotes.json.
Don't paraphrase quotes. If a transcript is missing, list it and continue.

Spot-check 10 quotes against Granola. If any are paraphrased, say so and re-run.

4. Cluster (Claude Code, 10 min)

Cluster quotes.json into 5–9 themes. A theme needs quotes from at least 3 participants.
Name each theme as a customer statement ("I don't trust the import"), not a feature.
Put quotes that contradict a theme into a "Contradictions" group, and anything that
fits nowhere into "Unsorted". Write findings.md with themes, participant counts and
quote IDs. Show me the theme list before doing anything in Figma.

Edit the theme names yourself. This is the judgment call, and it should be yours.

5. Lay out the board (Claude Code + FigJam, 15 min)

Create a new FigJam file named "Affinity map – Q4 onboarding" with the Figma MCP
create_new_file tool. Then use use_figma to build:
- one section per theme (theme name as the section title), in a grid;
- inside each, one sticky per quote: the quote text, then "— P0X, mm:ss";
- sticky color by participant (consistent across the board), and a small legend;
- a "Contradictions" section and an "Unsorted" section on the right.
Then use the Figma MCP generate_diagram tool to add a flowchart of the onboarding
journey as participants described it, with pain points as red nodes.
Return the board URL.

6. Run the workshop (FigJam, with humans)

Open the board with the team. Move stickies that are in the wrong place, merge themes, vote. The agent did the clerical work, and the team still owns the conclusions.

Time to set up

About an hour (estimate, not timed) once the interviews exist, depending mostly on how much quote checking you do.

Cost

• Typical: Granola Business $14/user/mo + Claude Pro $20/mo + Figma Professional Full seat $16/mo annual = $50/mo. Many product teams already pay for two of the three.
• Rate limits: Full seats on Professional get 200 Figma MCP read calls a day. Write tools such as create_new_file are exempt. A board of a few hundred stickies is a handful of use_figma calls.

Prices are list prices as of Oct 14, 2026.

Gotchas

• use_figma is free during beta, but not forever. Figma says it will move to usage-based pricing. Check the MCP FAQ before you build a habit on it.
• Seat matters. View and Collab seats are capped at 20 MCP tool calls a month, and Dev seats are read-only outside drafts. Use a Full seat, or keep the board in your drafts and move it later.
• Granola Basic won't do this. Without transcripts the quotes become summaries, and an affinity map of paraphrases is worse than none.
• Consent. Tell participants you're recording and how quotes will be used. Keep them anonymous on the board (participant codes, not names), especially if the board is shared widely.
• Clustering bias. Models like tidy themes. The "Contradictions" section and the 3-participant rule exist to stop one loud interviewee from becoming a theme.

Remix

• Survey responses instead of interviews: feed a CSV export to step 3 instead of Granola.
• Straight to a deck: after the workshop, ask Claude to turn the final board (get_figjam) into a findings summary and paste it into Gamma (Drop 004).
• Tickets from insights: file the top three pain points as Linear issues (Drop 002 shows the Linear setup).

Freshness log

• Oct 14, 2026: First published. Desk-checked against the Figma MCP server's tools, rate-limit and Claude Code setup docs, Granola's MCP docs and pricing, Figma's pricing page and Claude's pricing page.

Last verified: Oct 2026 (desk-checked, not run end-to-end). We checked every step, setting and price against the vendors' current docs. We have not yet run this chain live. If a step doesn't match what you see, reply and tell us. It'll be fixed in the next refresh.