Though our minds internally store and access richly encoded memories and then use those to predict and make sense of new situations, our conscious problem-solving is often impoverished in the detail that it utilizes. In problem solving, humans tend to give relatively little attention to actually identifying and formulating the problem. For example, generating requirements for new technology is a notoriously difficult task, and requirements generated often do not adequately capture the need. Several recent approaches to planning new technologies attempt to get around this difficulty by eliciting rich information about the current problems and needs before attempting to imagine solutions. All use actual events in the workplace to identify and formulate the problems to be solved by new technologies.
Researches go into the environment and observe and interview people operating in it.
A lower cost approach is to collect retrospective accounts of actual events that involved a significant problem, need, or impasse. Collecting anecdotes about such events is a powerful way to capture significant problems. Reconstructing specific events in detail provides good input for problem formulation. Anecdotes collected in this way can be about needs, problems in the existing technology, or problems in implementing new technology, etc. Such stories can be used in at least three ways.