from KJ Method Study Session @ Loftwork Preliminary Questionnaire
Q: I’m confused because I feel like things can be looked at from many different sides and can categorize materials into multiple groups.
A: There is nothing wrong with that feeling. Jiro Kawakita himself gives such an example in his association between islands of illustration.
-
C is also like A and D, and in another sense like B and E. These double or triple lines of relationship are called crossed circles.
For example, let’s say you are struggling with the grouping phase before diagramming.
- “C has a strong relationship with A, and a strong relationship with B, so which one should we stick with…”
- If there is a strong relationship between both, why not one group of three?
- Why did you consider “A and B are different groups”?
- Because A and B are not similar?
- For example, how about this case
- Front cover “Cylindrical columns look both circular and square.”
- Circles and squares are not similar, seemingly unrelated, but they are connected through the cylinder.
- Are you unconsciously ignoring these patterns?
- Not necessarily “different groups because they don’t look alike.”
- When you “collect things that seem to be related,” do you implicitly define “related” as only “similar?”
- I was curious about the use of the word “classification” in the question text. Classification is a narrower concept than KJ-method grouping, since classification is “to gather similar things together.
I think that there are cases where people have a chance to think once about whether the above cases apply to them and still say, “I still want a different group. For example, a case like this
- E is closely connected to everyone in A-D, so I want him to be one of them, but he’s also closely connected to everyone in F-I, so I want him to be one of them. If we put them all in one group, it would be too big, and A-D and F-I would fight with each other because they consider each other to be strangers to the other’s camp…
- In such cases, duplicating E will clear up the problem.
- If you make it a cross circle or connect the two E’s with an equal when you illustrate it later, you’ll know what I mean.
- Sometimes when I try to put a nameplate on each of them after putting them in two groups like this, I realize that I was focusing on a different side of E!
- The content of one label E can be verbalized in more detail in E after the fact by being placed in a different context.
- The opinion of
on a case similar to this is that “E should be ape”.
-
I often see people who resolve two or three small groups to form a larger group. This is because one or two pieces seem to be related to both Group A and Group B, and they try to solve the dilemma by creating a group that combines A and B, avoiding the one-sidedness of putting one of the pieces in either group. Instead, it is better to leave a monkey or two out of the problem and group A and B separately in a small group. If it is natural, Group A, Group B, and the separate monkey pieces will all be grouped together in the second stage of grouping. (Continuing Ideas p.60-62)
- This means the idea that “the next step will be this form
relevance
- A cylinder looks like a circle or a square, but it is neither a circle nor a square
- This means the idea that “the next step will be this form
This page is auto-translated from /nishio/複数のグループに入りそうで戸惑う using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.