Okay, let's start with the first step in our problem solving process, understanding and training the problem that we need to solve, it is a very critical part of creating a stainable solution. Therefore, we need to spend enough time into this step. And if needed, come back to it and reframe the problem later on as we discover more information. In essence, this might be an iterative process, not a linear one as depicted in the picture. The step is called understand and frame the problem. In this step, what we do is try to understand and define who is affected by the problem, who owns the problem, at what level it occurs.
What is our attitude and our relationship to the problem? Do we need to solve it that Anybody else need to solve it? Do we have to solve it as a team? Or do we need to solve it individually? And in addition, what is the impact of not solving the problem? All these questions are very important for gaining basic understanding about the situation.
And what we are faced with. Part of the exercise is framing the problem frames referred to the mental structures that we create, when we try to make sense of a situation or a problem that we need to solve. Frames are different for different persons, what is essential to us might be very current to somebody else, and vice versa. And we always create a somewhat subjective frame of the reality. So in this face, it is very, very important to try to look at the problem from this Print frames from different viewpoints. So that we create a rich understanding of the reality itself.
Based on different understandings and different information that we can capture. There are some tools that can help us frame and reframe the problem like the five w one h use cases, creative reframing, and many others. These are just some of the tools that we are going to discuss in a little bit more detail in this lecture. So the first two we want to look at is the so called Five w one H. It is basically a structured tool that helps us define the problem going through some key questions, like who has the problem, what is the problem about when it occurred, why it occurred, and so on. One of the lightweight versions of this tool is the who, what and why technique. It asks the key questions that help us identify the main person or people who are affected, what happened, why the problem occurred, and what is the problem itself.
Like in our example, that we are looking at, the problem belongs to the executive board but also to the employees. And it is related to a breach of security. So, going through this little process, we can define the basic elements of the problem that we are going to solve. use cases are another way that is very useful when it comes to framing problems. They're usually very helpful when we want to look at the problem from a more user centric end goal. oriented perspective.
In use cases, we typically have one primary actor that interacts with the solution in a certain way in order to achieve a goal. So, when we want to define the problem, having the main actor in mind use cases can help us out. While use cases typically involve discussion of a solution and we are very early in the process. So, we might not even have an idea of a solution. We can use problem statements to frame the problem. A problem statement contains several key elements the user the need that we have identified and also an insight about the environment or the specifics in which this need occurs.
It is very useful also to frame the problem statement is a question asking ourselves, how might we help the user who has a specific need overcome this challenge, because of the insight that we have arrived at. One of the challenges in this type of the process is to really find an objective frame that we can define for the problem. Sometimes, we unintentionally fall into assumptions and work with some ideas about solutions, which might be helpful, but sometimes these early stage might actually lead us into a wrong direction. What we'll want to do here is to try to look at the problem from all different aspects and to really open our minds for all possible solutions. So what We do in creative reframing is to look critically at the problem we have defined previously. And look, if we have some assumptions or some potential solutions in the way we have framed the problem, like in our example, we already have an assumption that the solution is related to a more secure database or a more secure system.
And actually, the solution might lie somewhere else in the process in the people in their relationships. So in the creative reframing process, we try to take these assumptions out and reframe the question in a way that doesn't assume solutions. So we looked at step one in our problem solving process, which is about understanding and framing the problem. We looked at some of the tools that can help you there. Let's see how the tool can be used in a real scenario.