Briefing and reframing: A situated practice

The ability to reframe a problematic situation in new and interesting ways is widely seen as one of the key characteristics of design thinking. In this paper we study how experienced designers have professionalised the crucial art of frame communication and new frame adoption with their clients. During briefing, professional designers elicit a client’s frame, reframe it to be more workable and desirable, and reflect it back. In this study fifteen experienced visual communications designers were interviewed and asked about briefing activities for what they deemed to be ‘typical’ and ‘innovative’ projects. This yielded rich descriptions of strategies that these professional designers used to enable reframing of the situation with clients, insights into possible difficulties and patterns of briefing practices.

► We study design briefing as a locus for the activities of framing and reframing.
► Interviews with expert designers reveal links between reframing and innovation.
► Opportunities to reframe depend upon client understandings of the designer’s role.
► Strategies for reframing include abstraction, analogy, immersion and conjecture.
► Barriers include fixation, a problem-solving mental-model and journey resistance.