Reframing: Definition, Methods & Examples for Innovation

Reframing is a method in which a problem, situation, or question is deliberately placed into a new conceptual frame to reveal different solution paths. Originally developed in psychotherapy [1], reframing has become a core competency in design thinking, service design, and innovation management over the past two decades [3][4].

If you search “reframing” in most languages, you’ll find ten variations of the same content: a Watzlawick definition, an NLP example, a couple of coaching tips for everyday life. No result explains how to use reframing as a structured method in an innovation project. None describes a concrete workshop format. And none makes the connection between the psychological foundation and the application that actually matters to you as a service designer, product manager, or innovation lead.

This guide closes that gap. It connects the theoretical foundations of Watzlawick [1] and Schon [2] with the applied research of Dorst [3] and Wedell-Wedellsborg [4] — and gives you a concrete process you can use in your next workshop.

What Is Reframing? Definition and Distinctions

Reframing literally means “re-framing” — you change the conceptual frame through which you view a situation, and in doing so, you change the meaning of the situation itself.

Paul Watzlawick, who introduced the term into therapeutic practice in 1974, defined reframing as follows:

“To reframe means to change the conceptual and/or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to which a situation is experienced and to place it in another frame which fits the ‘facts’ of the same concrete situation equally well or even better, and thereby changes its entire meaning.” [1]

This definition applies across all contexts. But the type of frame and the type of change differ significantly depending on the application:

Context	What gets reframed?	Goal	Example
Psychology/Coaching	Personal interpretation of a situation	Emotional relief, new behavioral options	”My child is stubborn” becomes “My child is strong-willed”
Design/Innovation	Problem definition of a project team	Better problem statement that leads to more effective solutions	”The elevator is too slow” becomes “Waiting is boring”
Communication/Rhetoric	Presentation of a matter	Persuasion, perspective steering	”Tax increase” becomes “Investment in public infrastructure”

The critical distinction for innovation practice: In a psychological context, reframing changes the interpretation of a given situation — the situation itself stays the same. In an innovation context, reframing changes the problem definition — and with it, the entire direction of the project. It is not about feeling better; it is about solving the right problem [3][4].

Related Terms

• Frame Innovation — Dorst’s term for the systematic process of creating new conceptual frames [3]
• Problem Reframing — in design thinking, the deliberate reformulation of the problem statement [4]
• Problem Setting — Schon’s term for the act of defining the problem before solving it [2]
• How Might We — a specific reframing technique that reformulates problems as opportunity questions
• Perspective Shift — the everyday term for viewing a situation from a different angle

Why Reframing Is the Most Important Innovation Competency

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg surveyed 106 C-suite executives from 91 companies across 17 countries. The result: 85% agreed that their organizations are bad at diagnosing problems — and 87% agreed that this shortcoming carries significant costs [4].

The implication is far-reaching: most innovation projects fail not because of poor solutions, but because of wrong problem statements. Teams spend weeks on brainstorming, prototyping, and testing — for a problem they never questioned.

Kees Dorst, Professor of Design Innovation at the University of Technology Sydney, calls this process “Frame Creation” and describes it as the core competency that separates expert designers from beginners [3]:

• Beginners accept the given problem statement and immediately search for solutions
• Expert designers question the problem statement itself and create new frames that enable different solutions

Donald Schon described this distinction as early as 1983 with the terms “Problem Setting” vs. “Problem Solving”: practitioners do not simply solve given problems — they define (frame) the problem first, before solving it [2]. He observed that experienced architects, therapists, and engineers work in a “reflective conversation with the situation”: they frame the problem, act, observe the situation’s “back-talk,” and reframe — an iterative cycle, not a linear process [2].

The Elevator Example: Reframing in 30 Seconds

The most well-known reframing example comes from building management and appears in virtually every design thinking curriculum:

Original problem: “The elevator in our office building is too slow. Tenants are complaining.”

Obvious solutions in the old frame: Install a faster motor, add a second elevator, optimize the stop algorithm — all expensive, complex, and limited in effect.

Reframe: “The problem is not the speed of the elevator. The problem is the boredom of waiting.”

Solution in the new frame: Install a mirror next to the elevator. People who look at themselves perceive waiting time as shorter. Cost: minimal. Complaints: drastically reduced.

This example illustrates three principles:

1. The frame determines the solution space. In the frame “elevator too slow,” only technical solutions exist. In the frame “waiting is boring,” an entirely different solution space opens up.
2. The best frame is not always obvious. Without deliberate reframing, the team would have spent thousands on an elevator upgrade.
3. Reframing requires discipline. The natural behavior is to stay in the first frame and search for solutions there.

4 Reframing Methods for Innovation Projects

Method 1: Perspective Shift Through Stakeholder Lenses

You reformulate the problem from the perspective of different stakeholders. Each perspective generates a different frame.

Process:

1. Write the current problem on a whiteboard
2. List all relevant stakeholders (users, employees, partners, regulators, competitors)
3. For each stakeholder, formulate: “From the perspective of [stakeholder], the problem is that…”
4. Compare the formulations — which opens the most promising solution space?

Example: A telecommunications provider has the problem “Too many customer calls to the call center.”

• From the customer’s perspective: “I can’t find the answer on the website.”
• From the call center agent’s perspective: “90% of my calls are about the same three topics.”
• From the product team’s perspective: “Our tariffs are too complex to understand without help.”

Each frame leads to a different solution: better FAQ, automated answers, or tariff simplification. The third frame addresses the cause rather than the symptom.

This method benefits from prior user research — if you have already created empathy maps or conducted user interviews, you can ground the stakeholder perspectives in real data rather than assumptions.

Method 2: Frame Inversion

You flip the problem and ask: “What if the opposite of the assumed problem is the actual problem?”

Process:

1. Formulate the current problem as a statement
2. Formulate its exact inversion
3. Check: Does the inversion contain an insight missing from the original?

Example: Insurance company

• Original: “Our customers don’t understand our products.”
• Inversion: “Our products aren’t designed for our customers’ understanding.”
• Insight: The problem lies not with the customer (lack of understanding) but with the product (lack of understandability). The solution shifts from customer communication to product design.

Method 3: Analogy Reframing (After Dorst)

Kees Dorst describes how expert designers create new frames by drawing analogies from other domains [3]. The most famous case: a neighborhood with nightclub problems (crime, noise, traffic) was not treated as a “security problem” but as a “music festival” — because festivals face similar challenges and proven solutions exist (crowd management, lighting design, staggered closing times) [3].

Process:

1. Describe your problem in one sentence
2. Ask: “Which completely different domain has solved a similar problem?”
3. Examine what frame that domain uses
4. Transfer the frame to your problem

Example: A hospital has the problem “Excessive wait times in the emergency department.”

• Analogy domain: Airports (also places where many people wait under stress)
• Airport frame: “The problem is not the wait time, but the uncertainty about the wait time.”
• Transfer: Real-time wait display, staged triage communication, progress indicator similar to boarding

Method 4: How-Might-We Reframing

The “How Might We” (HMW) question is a specific reframing technique that converts problems into opportunity questions. It originates from design thinking practice and is commonly used in the Define phase [6].

Process:

1. Take an insight from your user research
2. Formulate it as a “How might we…?” question
3. Vary the abstraction level: too narrow = constraining, too broad = useless
4. Choose the HMW question that opens the most productive solution space

Example: Insight from an empathy map: “Auto insurance customers feel abandoned after an accident.”

• Too narrow: “How might we call customers faster after an accident?” (already implies the solution)
• Right level: “How might we ensure that customers feel supported after an accident?”
• Too broad: “How might we improve the customer experience?” (too vague for focused ideation)

The HMW technique works particularly well as a transition between user research and ideation — between empathy maps or user research and brainstorming or brainwriting.

Step by Step: Facilitating a Reframing Workshop

The following process is based on a synthesis of Dorst’s frame creation process [3], Wedell-Wedellsborg’s seven practices [4], and established facilitation techniques from design thinking. Duration: 90 minutes, 4-8 participants, one facilitator.

Preparation (Before the Workshop)

• Prepare a problem statement: Formulate the current problem as it is understood by the team. Write it on a large card.
• Select participants: Mix perspectives — ideally people from different departments, hierarchy levels, and with varying levels of customer contact. Wedell-Wedellsborg explicitly recommends inviting “outsiders” — people not normally involved in the project [4].
• Materials: Whiteboard or large paper sheets, markers, sticky notes in three colors (for frame, assumption, reframe).

Phase 1: Make the Current Frame Visible (20 Min.)

Goal: The team recognizes that it already has a frame — and that this frame contains assumptions.

1. Post the problem statement: “Our problem is: […]”
2. Each participant writes silently: “When I hear this problem, I assume that…” (5 min., 3-5 sticky notes each)
3. Everyone places their assumption notes around the problem statement
4. Cluster the assumptions. Typical clusters: assumptions about the user, about the cause, about the solution, about constraints
5. Mark the strongest assumptions — those the team takes for granted without having validated them

Facilitation tip: The most common assumption is the causal assumption: “The problem exists because…” If you identify this assumption, you have the strongest lever for reframing.

Phase 2: Challenge the Frame (25 Min.)

Goal: Develop alternative perspectives on the problem.

Use at least two of the four methods from the previous section:

• Stakeholder perspectives (10 min.): Each participant adopts the role of a stakeholder and reformulates the problem
• Frame inversion (5 min.): Formulate the exact opposite of the problem. What insight lies in the inversion?
• Analogy search (10 min.): “Which other industry has solved a similar problem? How did they frame it?”

Record all alternative frames on separate cards.

Phase 3: Evaluate and Select Frames (20 Min.)

Goal: Identify the most promising reframe.

Donald Schon proposed five evaluation criteria for reframings [2]:

Criterion	Question
Solvability	Can we arrive at a concrete solution with this frame?
Desirability	Does this frame lead to a solution that we and our users actually want?
Coherence	Does this frame fit what we know about the situation?
Congruence	Is this frame compatible with our values and strategic goals?
Openness	Does this frame keep inquiry open, or does it close off options prematurely?

Evaluate each alternative frame against these criteria. Discuss as a team: which frame opens the most promising solution space?

Phase 4: Formulate and Anchor the New Frame (25 Min.)

Goal: A precise, shared new problem statement.

1. Formulate the chosen reframe as a new problem statement (10 min.)
2. Test: Is the new statement specific enough for focused ideation, yet broad enough to allow different solutions?
3. Formulate 3-5 “How Might We” questions derived from the new frame
4. Document: old statement, assumptions, new statement, HMW questions
5. Agree on the next step: typically an ideation session (e.g., brainstorming or morphological box) based on the new HMW questions

Documentation tip: Photograph the whiteboard and create a one-page reframing protocol: “We started with [old problem]. We realized we were assuming that [assumptions]. We reframed to [new problem], because [rationale].”

Reframing Example: Insurance Company Digitizes Claims Reporting

A German insurance company faced the following problem:

Original problem statement: “Our online claims form has a 68% abandonment rate. We need to simplify the form.”

The product team had already tested three iterations — fewer fields, clearer language, progress bar. The abandonment rate dropped from 74% to 68%. Marginal improvement, but the core problem remained.

The Reframing Process

Phase 1 — Make assumptions visible: The team identified its core assumption: “Customers abandon because the form is too complicated.”

Phase 2 — Challenge the frame:

• Stakeholder perspective (customer): “I just had an accident. I’m stressed. I don’t want to fill out a form right now — I want someone to take care of me.”
• Frame inversion: “What if the problem isn’t the form, but the timing?”
• Analogy: Emergency room triage: there, too, complete intake forms aren’t filled out immediately. First the acute care, then the documentation.

Reframe: “The problem is not the complexity of the form. The problem is that we’re asking a stressed customer for complete documentation at the worst possible moment.”

The Result

The new problem statement led to a fundamentally different solution: instead of further simplifying the form, the process was split into two phases:

1. Immediate phase (right after the incident): Only three pieces of information — “What happened?”, “When?”, “Are you injured?” Plus a callback promise within 2 hours.
2. Detail phase (24-48 hours later): The full form, when the customer has calmed down and gathered the necessary documents.

The abandonment rate of the immediate phase was 12%. The completion rate for phase 2 was 89%. The reframing had not changed the form — it had changed the problem.

Reframing in the Design Thinking Process

Reframing is not a standalone phase you go through once. It is a competency that runs through the entire design thinking process — but has its most critical application in the Define phase.

Design Thinking Phase	Role of Reframing
Empathize (Understand)	Reframing your own assumptions about the user: “What if our picture of the user is wrong?”
Define	Primary application: Reframing the problem statement based on research insights
Ideate	Reframing individual ideas: “What if we designed this idea for a different audience?”
Prototype	Reframing the prototype’s purpose: “We’re not testing the solution, we’re testing our assumption about the problem”
Test	Reframing test results: “The user rejects the prototype — are they rejecting the solution or our understanding of the problem?”

Reframing as the Bridge Between Research and Ideation

In many innovation teams, there is a gap between user research and idea generation. The team has created empathy maps, conducted user interviews, drawn journey maps — and then jumps straight into a brainstorming session. What is missing is the translation step: distilling research insights into a reframed problem statement that steers ideation in the right direction.

Reframing is that translation step. Without reframing, ideation is blind.

When Reframing Doesn’t Work: 5 Failure Patterns

Reframing is no silver bullet. There are documented situations where reframing causes harm rather than help [3][4]:

Failure Pattern 1: Endless Reframing Instead of Commitment

Some teams use reframing as an avoidance strategy: every time a decision is due, they “reframe one more time.” The result is analysis paralysis dressed up as reframing.

Countermeasure: Set an explicit time limit for the reframing phase. After the workshop, the team commits to one frame — even if it may be revised later.

Failure Pattern 2: Reframing Without Domain Knowledge

Dorst emphasizes that frame creation requires genuine domain knowledge [3]. A team that does not understand the industry, the users, and the technical constraints can reframe creatively, but the new frames are often disconnected from reality.

Countermeasure: Always base reframing on user research and domain expertise, never treat it as a pure creativity exercise.

Failure Pattern 3: Political Reframing

In hierarchical organizations, reframing can be instrumentalized: the frame that fits the already-decided solution is presented as the “result” of the workshop. If every reframe leads to the same conclusion, that is a warning sign [4].

Countermeasure: Anonymous frame proposals, inclusion of outsiders, explicit check: “Do different frames lead to different solutions?”

Failure Pattern 4: Performative Reframing

The team goes through the exercise mechanically, without genuine openness to changing the frame. Everyone already knows where the project is headed — the reframing is a formality that legitimizes the existing course.

Countermeasure: Facilitate reframing as an open-ended process. If the new frame is identical to the old one, that is a valid result — but only if it occurs after honest examination.

Failure Pattern 5: Confusing Reframing with Brainstorming

Reframing generates new problem statements. Brainstorming generates solutions for a given problem statement. When a team starts generating solutions in a “reframing session,” it has missed the method’s purpose.

Countermeasure: Separate reframing and ideation in time and space. The output of a reframing workshop is a new problem statement and HMW questions — not solutions.

Reframing, Framing, and the Framing Effect: What’s the Difference?

Three terms that are frequently confused:

Term	Meaning	Discipline	Example
Reframing	Deliberately changing the conceptual frame of a problem or situation	Psychology, Design, Innovation	Reframing the elevator problem from “too slow” to “waiting is boring”
Framing	The existing (often unconscious) conceptual frame through which a situation is interpreted	Cognitive science, Communication	Media report on a “tax increase” or an “investment in infrastructure”
Framing Effect	Cognitive bias: the formulation of an option influences the decision, even when the options are objectively equal	Behavioral economics (Kahneman & Tversky)	“90% survival rate” is evaluated more positively than “10% mortality rate”

Reframing presupposes framing: you must recognize the existing frame before you can change it. But reframing is something fundamentally different from the framing effect: reframing is a deliberate, methodical problem-solving process, not a psychological bias.

Reframing in Practice: Related Methods at a Glance

Reframing does not stand in isolation. It connects to a range of service design methods, each serving a different function in the innovation process:

Method	Relationship to Reframing	When to Use
Design Thinking	Reframing is the core competency of the Define phase	End-to-end process for user-centered innovation
Empathy Map	Supplies raw material for evidence-based reframing	Before reframing, to collect user perspectives
Brainstorming	Generates solutions after reframing	After reframing, when the new problem statement is set
Morphological Box	Structured ideation within the new frame	When the solution space needs systematic exploration
Ishikawa Diagram	Analyzes causes within a frame	When the causal structure of a defined problem needs clarification
5 Whys	Vertical reframing: drills through layers of causation	When a single causal chain needs deepening
Jobs to Be Done	Reframing features as user tasks	When product features need translation into user perspective

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is reframing in simple terms?

Reframing means deliberately looking at a problem from a different perspective to discover new solution paths. Instead of accepting the given problem definition, you question the frame in which the problem is formulated — and often find better starting points than those in the original frame.

What reframing methods exist?

The four most common reframing methods in innovation practice are: (1) Perspective shift through stakeholder lenses, (2) Frame inversion, (3) Analogy reframing after Dorst, and (4) How-Might-We reframing. Additionally, psychological variants such as context reframing and meaning reframing exist, primarily used in coaching.

What is the difference between reframing and brainstorming?

Reframing changes the question — brainstorming generates answers. Reframing is the upstream step: it ensures the team is working on the right problem before developing solutions through brainstorming or other ideation methods.

Who invented reframing?

The term was coined in 1974 by Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, and Richard Fisch in their book Change [1]. The application to design and innovation traces back to Donald Schon’s concept of “Problem Setting” (1983) [2] and Kees Dorst’s “Frame Innovation” (2015) [3].

Is reframing the same as a perspective shift?

A perspective shift is an everyday term for viewing a situation from a different angle. Reframing goes further: it changes not just the viewpoint, but the entire conceptual frame in which a problem is defined — and with it, the direction of the entire solution process.

Does reframing always work?

No. Reframing fails when applied without domain knowledge, when misused as a political instrument, or when a team endlessly reframes instead of committing to a problem definition. Reframing is a method, not a guarantee — and it requires the same discipline as any other innovation method.

When Reframing Is the Right Method — and When It’s Not

Use reframing when:

• Your team has been iterating on a solution for several rounds, but results are stagnating
• Different stakeholders describe the problem differently — a sign of an unclear or contested frame
• User research yields insights that don’t match the existing problem definition
• You suspect the team is treating the symptom rather than the cause
• You are at the transition from research to ideation — between empathy map and brainstorming

Use a different tool when:

• The problem is clearly defined and uncontested — then go straight to ideation
• You need quantitative data to confirm a cause — then use the Ishikawa diagram or statistical methods
• You want to systematically search for solutions within an existing frame — then use the morphological box

Our Perspective: Why We Wrote This Guide

We use reframing in our service innovation consulting practice as one of the first methods — typically at the transition from the exploration phase to the concept phase in our Integrated Service Development Process (iSEP). Our experience confirms Wedell-Wedellsborg’s finding [4]: most innovation projects we support start with a problem statement that turns out to be incomplete or misleading as the work progresses.

In our practice, reframing is not an optional creativity impulse but a systematic quality assurance step for problem definitions. When a team cannot reframe a problem — when it finds no alternative frame — that is not a failure of the method but a strong signal that the existing problem definition is actually robust.

Research Methodology

This article synthesizes findings from Watzlawick’s foundational work on problem formulation (1974), Schon’s theory of the reflective practitioner (1983), Dorst’s frame innovation methodology (2015), Wedell-Wedellsborg’s empirical study on problem reframing in organizations (2017, N=106 C-suite executives), Hofmann’s German-language practice perspective (2023), and Tschimmel’s design thinking toolkit analysis (2012). Sources cover both theoretical foundations and practical application.

Limitations: Academic reframing research originates primarily from psychotherapy (Watzlawick) and design research (Dorst, Schon). The transfer to organizational contexts is theoretically grounded but empirically limited in validation. Wedell-Wedellsborg’s study is one of the few with quantitative data but relies on self-reports. The worked example is illustratively constructed.

Disclosure

SI Labs provides consulting in the area of service innovation and service development. Reframing is one of the methods we use in the exploration phase of our Integrated Service Development Process (iSEP), before moving into ideation and concept development. We have deliberately included the method’s limitations and failure patterns [3][4], because we believe that honest assessment of a method is more useful than uncritical recommendation.

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References

[1] Watzlawick, Paul, John H. Weakland, and Richard Fisch. Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution. New York: W.W. Norton, 1974. [Foundational work | Theoretical | Citations: 10,000+ | Quality: 95/100]

[2] Schon, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books, 1983. [Foundational work | Theoretical | Citations: 60,000+ | Quality: 95/100]

[3] Dorst, Kees. Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. [Monograph | Theoretical-practical | Citations: 1,500+ | Quality: 90/100]

[4] Wedell-Wedellsborg, Thomas. “Are You Solving the Right Problems?” Harvard Business Review 95, No. 1 (January—February 2017): 76—83. [Practice article | Survey N=106 C-Suite | Citations: 500+ | Quality: 85/100]

[6] Tschimmel, Katja. “Design Thinking as an Effective Toolkit for Innovation.” Proceedings of ISPIM (2012): 1—20. [Conference paper | Theoretical-practical | Citations: 400+ | Quality: 78/100]