Introducing the eCanvas: A Visual Approach to Using EPIC to Explore a Situation of Interest Authors

The eCanvas is presented as an innovative visual aid designed to enhance communication of systemic enquiries to audiences without formal training in systems thinking. It achieves this by linking the FMT Circle with Jackson’s EPIC framework (Explore, Produce, Intervene, Check), which is underpinned by Critical Systems Thinking (CST). EPIC is a multimethodology that evolved from Critical Systems Practice (CSP) to bring coherence to diverse systems methodologies, supporting decision-making and purposeful improvement in complex real-world situations. The eCanvas emphasises the iterative nature of CSP, with information flowing between stages. Critically, any new information or emergent insights from ‘Intervene’ or ‘Check’ must be re-filtered through the ‘Explore’ stage before influencing ‘Produce’, ensuring robustness and analytical depth. A practical application in managing electricity consumption for a leisure facility demonstrates how the eCanvas facilitates communication and allows for the refinement of problem identification and intervention strategies through multiple iterations. Ultimately, the eCanvas serves as a visual and accessible user interface to effectively deploy and communicate the outputs of systems thinking, bridging the gap between practitioners and a wider audience. Clinical trial number: not applicable.