After you organized groups, you attach nameplates and bundle them. A nameplate is a concise description of the group. Put the nameplate on top of a bundle of pieces.
It is similar to the box stacking metaphor of abstraction.
Many people have experienced writing out stickers and putting them on a whiteboard. However, in many cases, we do not make nameplates. The reason may be that there is not a large number of stickers. As introduced in (5.2.1) Spread so that you can see the whole at a glance, the amount of stickers that we can put on a general whiteboard is surprisingly small.
According to Jiro Kawakita, by doing a two-hour brainstorming to prepare the KJ method, we get dozens to a hundred and dozens of pieces. Alex Faickney Osborn, who advocated brainstorming, says in his book, “the only thing that needs to do strictly formally is the record of all the ideas submitted,” about the rules of brainstorming. If we submit one idea per minute in two-hour brainstorming, we get 120 pieces. It is possible enough.
As for my experience, the KJ method is a method for the situation where there are around 100 pieces.
At the beginning of this chapter, I first explained to identify whether too much information or too few information. I set the goal to the 100 pieces.
That is because the KJ method is a method to compress pieces of information by making nameplates in a situation where a sufficient amount of information is written out.
- (5.2.6.1) Merits and demerits of nameplate making
- (5.2.6.2) A group that can make a nameplate is a good group
- (5.2.6.3) Making a nameplate when we have a huge number of pieces
- (5.2.6.4) “Organizing information” and “Tidying your room” are similar
- (Column) Nameplate and color of pieces
- (Column) Consistency of knowledge