The Coimagination Method and its Evaluation via the Conversation Interactivity Measuring Method

Planning Functions

It is difficult to estimate the internal views or feelings of other people from external observation, but these internal views and feelings are the keys for understanding one another (Figure 1 - 1). To lower such barriers, the coimagination method asks participants to bring three images according to the themes of the session to share internal views or feelings and to communicate using the images. To prepare the image topics, participants may ask themselves what they would like to talk about according to the theme and to explore their internal worlds to determine their own topics. Then, participants search images that represent the topics and explore the external world by taking new pictures. Another preparation method is to observe the participants' personal belongings, such as albums and books, and look for familiar things in the external world. Participants recall what they are or where they were located so that they can take note of their original viewpoints, i.e., their internal worlds. In both ways, participants can plan their conversation by moving back and forth between their internal worlds and the external world. The planning functions of the participants are expected to be activated during this process. The themes are arbitrary, but the preferable ones encourage participants to pay attention to the external world, e.g., favorite foods. For instance, one of the participants brought images of pickled plums, fermented soy beans, and vegetable juice for the theme (Figure 1 - 2). All images brought by the participants are registered on the computer by the organizers before the session starts.