Problem Framing Canvas: Making Sense of Problems for Better Responses – Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation

Problems are always opportunities to create better futures.

No matter whether they can be solved through human ingenuity, or whether they are so complex and wicked that we can only inch our way forward through experimentation, we need develop our critical thinking skills to seek out promising spaces. We need to practice how to grapple with ways of understanding and responding to problems with imagination, grit and determination.

This printable booklet was created by the Griffith Centre for Systems Innovation as a way to approach, work-through and ultimately tackle problems that may arise during life, work or anything else.

The creators of this booklet started to explore ways in which they could work
with people to ‘zoom out’ and focus on how people could frame and name problems more effectively, recognise different types of problems, and start to ‘learn’ their way into responding. They developed some of their own ways of helping people, and they borrowed some of the great tools and frameworks others have used to support better framings and responses to problems. They drew these together in a canvas to help people spend more time framing problems rather than jumping headlong into problem ‘solving’.