PSDA.1:1 - Problem frame
Use this pattern when one wording of “the problem” is becoming naturalized even though materially different accounts would change what is included, what evidence matters, which interventions are plausible, whose values are exposed, or what the recipient should do next.
Begin from the bounded inquiry question. A professional engagement can supply it through PSDA.11. Use the PSDA.12 participation and concern account when affected participants, Systems, duties, interests, or dissent are material. Generate formulations that differ in decision-bearing structure, not merely vocabulary, and return them without selecting a winner.
The practical gain is an inspectable choice of frames before modeling, option generation, or comparison locks in the sponsor’s first account. Do not use PSDA.1 for a thesaurus exercise, generic creativity session, alternative generation for an already-stable problem (PSDA.5), or archive/front stewardship (C.18). If one formulation is already adequate and no credible rival could change the receiving use, proceed to the actual missing result.
PSDA.1:1.1 - Working Distinctions
| Working term | Meaning in this pattern |
|---|---|
| problem formulation | A bounded, source-qualified account of what condition or relation warrants inquiry or intervention for a named receiving use. It proposes a subject, boundary, concern, evidence need, and intervention logic; it is not the situation itself. |
| plural formulation set | Two or more materially different formulations retained together because each can change a downstream boundary, model, alternative family, value treatment, evidence request, or recommendation. |
| material difference | A difference that changes at least one decision-support move. Synonyms, rhetorical emphasis, or unexplained labels are not material plurality. |
| intervention logic | The connection a formulation proposes between the condition treated as problematic and the families of action, inquiry, adaptation, or restraint worth considering. It is a hypothesis, not proof of causation or effectiveness. |
| framing commitment | A supported or provisional inclusion, exclusion, assumption, value emphasis, or causal hypothesis built into one formulation. |
Ill-structured situations do not arrive with one neutral problem object waiting to be described. “Insufficient capacity”, “unequal protection”, “maintenance fragility”, and “unsafe deployment” can concern the same pumping arrangement while selecting different bearers, boundaries, evidence, interventions, and consequences. The formulations may conflict, overlap, or remain jointly useful.
The primary concern is to make those decision-bearing differences recoverable before one model or Method absorbs them. Recognition is cheap: one credible rival intervention logic is enough to test plurality. Assurance remains direct for every factual, causal, evaluative, legal, ethical, safety, authority, or source claim used within a formulation.