CB.10:1 - Problem frame

Use this pattern when people need to decide whether a cultural or community arrangement is useful, what to change, or what support to continue, and visible activity does not answer that question. Meetings may be well attended while the intended help remains absent. A quiet reader may use a guide successfully without posting. An employer may ask what changed in practice after staff spent time together.

The subject is the value and burden of the arrangement for its participants, contributors, independent users and supporters. The move is to recover particular experiences and uses, connect them with relevant observations, and obtain an account that informs a practical decision. This includes cultural work whose carriers do not communicate with one another.

The first useful result states what people received or did, what changed, which contribution the evidence supports, what remains uncertain and which condition should be continued or changed. A useful conversation or sense of welcome can be a result in its own right. A promise of improved work also needs evidence from that work.

The intended user can talk with affected people and obtain or commission the observations needed for the decision. The pattern develops practical inquiry and feedback. A causal estimate, specialist capability judgement or formal method trial requires the corresponding method and evidence.

Ordinary non-use. When the result is already established at the needed scope and the only difficulty is allocating the agreed support, use CB.9. A routine attendance count needed to book a suitable room can remain a routine count. Return here when its interpretation or the activity’s usefulness is in question.