In May 2025, our CEO Tetsuro Kondo ran two issue map workshops in a design thinking course at a university.

An issue map is a diagram that makes visible how the issues in a field or theme relate to one another. Each circle is one issue, and issues are connected by lines of cause and effect. ZUKAI has made them for fields such as nursing care, home medical care, women's health and local mobility.

In this course, students work in seven themes and do fieldwork. Over the two sessions, the workshop took them from writing down what they had noticed there as issues to deciding which issues to work on.

Session 1: Making the issues visible

We began by explaining what an issue map is and when it is used. Looking at one issue alone sometimes does not lead to a solution; looking at how the whole is connected shows where a change is needed.

Students on the same theme then shared what they had noticed, and each student drew an issue map on paper. They wrote in this order.

  • Cause issues: based on what they observed, write who was in trouble, in what situation, and how
  • Central issue: move one level of abstraction up and write what several issues lead to
  • Derived issues: widen the view and write whose issues the central issue leads to

Students shared their maps within their teams, and at the end we gave feedback to each of the seven themes.

Session 2: Deciding which issues matter

In the second session, the maps drawn by individual students were combined into one map per theme. Before that, we narrowed the points to keep in mind when writing down to three.

  • Write so that someone seeing it for the first time understands
  • Write issues, not ideas
  • Write from observation and research, not only from your own view

Issues were written in a common form: who, in what situation, has trouble with what. For example: "Local residents, at a bus stop with no roof to keep off the rain, find it hard to wait long for a bus."

After combining the maps, students colored the issues that mattered most and shared them theme by theme.

Details

  • When: May 2025 (two sessions)
  • Course: A university design thinking course
  • Content: Issue map workshop (two sessions)
  • Instructor: Tetsuro Kondo, CEO, ZUKAI Inc.