Three uses of "frame"
The word "frame" appears across multiple intellectual traditions, each using it to describe how structure shapes meaning and possibility. In the previous post, I explored how Fillmore's case grammar and frame semantics reveal the rich semantic structure that verbs encode. But Fillmore's linguistic frames connect to a broader intellectual landscape: Erving Goffman's sociological frame analysis examines how situations are defined and interpreted, and Kees Dorst's designerly framing describes how problem definitions open or close solution spaces. This post traces the connections between these three traditions and asks what service design might learn from their convergence.
Fillmore's frame semantics
Charles Fillmore's frame semantics (1976, 1982) argues that understanding language requires access to structured background knowledge - frames that organise our understanding of situations, events, and relationships. A frame, in Fillmore's sense, is a schematised scenario that provides the context for word meanings. The word "buy" does not have meaning in isolation; it evokes a commercial transaction frame with roles for Buyer, Seller, Goods, Money, and implicit norms about exchange. Understanding "Sarah bought a book" requires activating this frame - even though the sentence mentions only the Buyer and Goods, the Seller, Money, and transaction itself are implicitly present. As Lakoff and Johnson (1999) put it, "Semantic frames provide an overall conceptual structure defining the semantic relationships among whole systems of concepts"; a frame is not a definition but a gestalt, a structured whole that makes sense of its parts.
Several properties of linguistic frames matter for the argument that follows. First, words do not describe frames; they evoke them. The word "verdict" evokes a legal trial frame without explicitly mentioning judge, jury, defendant, or evidence, and competent speakers can fill in the frame elements because the frame is part of shared cultural knowledge. Second, when a frame is evoked, we import default assumptions: the commercial transaction frame assumes voluntary exchange, mutual benefit, and binding agreement, and these defaults are present unless explicitly negated.
Third, frame elements are not merely a list but have structured relationships; in the trial frame, the judge presides, the jury deliberates, and the verdict applies to the defendant, and these relations constrain how the frame can be instantiated. Fourth, and most consequentially for service design, the same situation can be understood through different frames. A medical consultation might be framed as a commercial transaction (patient as customer), a caring relationship (patient as person in need), or an institutional process (patient as case), and the frame chosen shapes what aspects are foregrounded and what actions seem appropriate.
Goffman's frame analysis
Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (1974) shifts the concept from linguistics into sociology, examining how people make sense of "what is going on" in social situations. For Goffman, a frame is an interpretive schema that allows individuals to "locate, perceive, identify, and label" occurrences in their life space; frames answer the question: what kind of situation is this? As he puts it, "I assume that definitions of a situation are built up in accordance with principles of organization which govern events - at least social ones - and our subjective involvement in them; frame is the word I use to refer to such of these basic elements as I am able to identify" (Goffman, 1974).
Goffman distinguishes primary frameworks - the basic interpretive schemas we apply to make sense of events - into natural frameworks, which understand events as undirected physical occurrences (the weather, gravity, biological processes), and social frameworks, which understand events as guided by intelligence, intention, and agency (actions, performances, communications). The same physical occurrence can be framed either way: a person falling might be understood naturally (they slipped) or socially (they are performing a pratfall), and the frame determines what questions are relevant and what responses are appropriate.
One of Goffman's most productive concepts is keying - a systematic transformation of a primary framework into something understood as based on it but different in important ways. A theatrical performance is a keying of everyday action: it looks like real activity but operates under different rules. Common keyings include make-believe (play, fantasy, dramatic performance), contests (games, sports, competitions), ceremonials (rituals, formal procedures), technical redoings (practice, demonstration, rehearsal), and regroundings (transformations for different purposes). Keyings can be layered: a rehearsal (technical redoing) of a play (make-believe) of a trial (social framework), with each layer adding complexity to interpreting what is really going on. Goffman's (1959) earlier work on self-presentation operates in the same territory; social actors manage impressions within frames, and the distinction between sincere and cynical performance is itself a framing question.
Frames can also break. Ambiguity arises when it is unclear which frame applies; error occurs when the wrong frame is imposed (thinking the joke was serious); deception involves deliberate manipulation of framing; and frame disputes emerge when interactants disagree about what kind of situation they are in. When frames break, participants must engage in repair work - re-establishing a shared definition of the situation through explicit negotiation ("I was only joking") or subtle cues that realign interpretation.
A crucial insight is that frames are not consciously created but interactionally accomplished. As van Hulst and Yanow (2014) observe, "One feature of Goffman's interactionist 'definition of the situation' is that it is not consciously created". We do not typically decide what kind of situation we are in; we recognise it through practised perception, and the frame shapes our experience before we can reflect on it, which makes framing powerful and difficult to change deliberately.
Dorst's design framing
Kees Dorst's work on frame creation (2011, 2015) brings framing into design theory, describing how designers approach complex problems. His key insight is that in design, the problem and solution co-evolve; designers do not receive a well-defined problem and then search for solutions but actively construct problem definitions that open possibilities for action. Design reasoning, Dorst argues, is fundamentally abductive. Where deduction moves from general rules to specific conclusions, and induction moves from specific observations to general rules, abduction involves reasoning toward the frame itself - asking what frame would make this situation tractable. A frame, for Dorst, is "a general implication that by applying a certain working principle, we can expect a certain value or outcome".
Dorst (2015) describes frame creation as moving through several phases: understanding the problem situation deeply through its history, stakeholders, and prior attempts; identifying the core tensions that make the problem difficult; examining the broader system; exploring themes and patterns across similar situations; and then generating new frames that redefine the problem before exploring what each frame implies for possible solutions. The key move is from themes to frames - finding a way to understand the situation that opens productive action. This often involves metaphorical reasoning, seeing the situation as something else (a city nightlife problem as a festival, for instance). For Dorst, frames are not interpretations of existing situations but creative acts that constitute problems; as he writes, "The key principle of frame creation lies in its approach to a problem situation. The problem and its formulation have their roots in a specific context, and insight into the context and its connection to the general themes that can be identified - and their possibilities for frame-based rethinking - is critical" (Dorst, 2015).
Van der Bijl-Brouwer (2019) extends this by noting that "we cannot simply adopt a practice that we have found to be successful in a particular context without understanding why it was effective in that context", which implies that much of what appears to be problem-solving failure is actually framing failure - the inherited frame makes the problem unsolvable. Schön and Rein (1994) made a related argument about policy: intractable policy controversies persist not because the facts are disputed but because the frames through which different actors interpret the facts are incompatible, and resolution requires reflection on the frames themselves rather than more evidence within them.
What the three frames share
The three traditions use "frame" differently - Fillmore's is a cognitive knowledge structure, Goffman's is an interactional accomplishment, Dorst's is a design move - but they share a family resemblance. In each tradition, frames are enabling constraints: a frame does not merely limit interpretation but makes interpretation possible, because without the commercial transaction frame "buy" would be meaningless, without a shared situational frame social interaction would collapse, and without a problem frame design would have no direction. In each tradition, frames are usually tacit: Fillmore's frames are background knowledge activated automatically, Goffman's are taken-for-granted definitions, and even Dorst's creative frames, once adopted, become the unquestioned ground for action.
In each tradition, frames can nonetheless be contested and changed: Fillmore's evolve with culture and language, Goffman's can break and be repaired, and Dorst's can be deliberately created. And in each tradition, multiple frames can apply to the same material: the same words can evoke different frames ("bank" as financial institution versus riverbank), the same situation can be defined differently (a meeting as negotiation versus ritual), and the same problem can be framed differently (homelessness as housing shortage versus mental health crisis versus economic exclusion).
Service design and framing
Bringing these three traditions together illuminates aspects of service design practice that are otherwise difficult to articulate. When we name a service - "Apply for housing benefit", "Book a GP appointment" - we evoke linguistic frames that shape user understanding; the verb evokes an action frame (application, scheduling) and the noun evokes an object frame (benefit as entitlement, appointment as allocated time).
But we also evoke situational frames in Goffman's sense. "Apply for housing benefit" frames the user as supplicant to authority; "Check your benefit entitlement" frames the user as information-seeker; "Get help with housing costs" frames the user as person with a problem. These different framings imply different relationships, expectations, and emotional valences. Service naming is frame design, whether we recognise it or not - a point that connects to the earlier post on verbs and nouns, where I argued that the verb-noun combination in service names does more semantic work than the "good services are verbs" heuristic acknowledges.
Every service encounter is also a Goffmanian situation requiring a shared definition. Is this interaction bureaucratic (following rules), caring (responding to need), commercial (exchanging value), or educational (building capability)? Service failures often involve frame misalignment: the provider frames the encounter as bureaucratic ("I need you to complete this form correctly") while the user frames it as caring ("I need help"), and neither frame is wrong, but they imply different scripts, different expectations, different notions of success. Service blueprints typically capture the sequence of interactions but not the framing of those interactions, and mapping the frames at play - where they align, where they diverge, where they might be deliberately transformed - would add an analytical dimension that blueprints currently lack.
Dorst's frame creation is directly relevant to service design for complex social challenges. Consider hospital discharge: the problem might be framed as flow management (how to move patients through the system efficiently), care transition (how to ensure continuity across settings), patient experience (how to make discharge less confusing), or system coordination (how to align hospital, community, and social care). Each frame implies different metrics, different stakeholders, different interventions, and the frame creation challenge is not to find the "right" frame but to find one that opens productive action and to recognise when inherited frames have become obstacles. This connects to the boundary objects analysis: design artefacts can function as framing devices - objects that propose or reinforce particular definitions of situations. A journey map that foregrounds user emotion frames the service differently from one that foregrounds operational efficiency; the artefact does not just represent, it frames.
The limits of frame talk
A caution is warranted. "Framing" can become a magic word that explains everything and nothing; if every problem is a framing problem and every intervention is a reframe, the concept loses analytical purchase. Frames are not infinitely malleable: they are constrained by material reality, institutional structures, power relations, and cognitive habits, and proposing a new frame is easy while getting others to adopt it is hard. Material constraints are real, resource limits are real, and framing does not make them disappear - it shapes how we understand and respond to them, but it does not make them optional. Perhaps most importantly, discussing frames can obscure questions of power: whose frame prevails, and who gets to define the situation? Frame conflicts are often power struggles, and treating them as merely cognitive or communicative can depoliticise what is actually contested.
These caveats point toward the need for a more systematic method - one that does not merely invoke framing as an explanatory concept but provides tools for mapping what is actually going on in a situation, including what is silenced and who holds the power to define. The next post explores Adele Clarke's situational analysis as one such method, adapting it for service design with the linguistic precision developed across the case grammar and conceptual spaces posts in this series.
References
Dorst, K. (2011). The core of 'design thinking' and its application. Design Studies, 32(6), 521-532.
Dorst, K. (2015). Frame creation and design in the expanded field. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 1(1), 22-33.
Dorst, K. (2015). Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design. MIT Press.
Fillmore, C.J. (1976). Frame semantics and the nature of language. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 280, 20-32.
Fillmore, C.J. (1982). Frame semantics. In Linguistics in the Morning Calm (pp. 111-137). Hanshin Publishing.
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Harvard University Press.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books.
Schön, D.A. and Rein, M. (1994). Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies. Basic Books.
van der Bijl-Brouwer, M. (2019). Problem framing expertise in public and social innovation. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 5(1), 29-43.
van Hulst, M. and Yanow, D. (2014). From policy "frames" to "framing": theorizing a more dynamic, political approach. American Review of Public Administration, 46(1), 92-112.