The identification of what a design problem is continued...

Again the following has been taken from from the book - Donald Schön's The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action and the blog/book review of the book by Dan Saffer who is an Experience Design Director at Adaptive Path and the author of the book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices.

This last section captures what it means to be a reflective practitioner and in my own view a way in which interaction design can be so open to different frames depending upon what the problem is, so need to be able to use a selection of different frames as you would for different tools for a job and where the concept of frame analysis is so relevant.

"What does it mean to be a reflective practitioner? Schön says

[E]ach individual develops his own way of framing his role. Whether he chooses his role frame from the profession's repertoire, or fashions it for himself, his professional knowledge takes on the characteristics of a system. The problem he sets, the strategies he employs, the facts he treats as relevant, and his interpersonal theories of action are bound up with his way of framing his role.

This is why, I think, we see so many clashes on the various design mailing lists about what to call ourselves, what our roles should be, and where the boundaries are for disciplines like experience design and interaction design. It is different frames colliding. One practitioner thinks interaction design is interface design, another thinks interface design is a subset of interaction design, and on and on. Schön suggests that rather than fight about which of these frames is the correct one, we simply practice "frame analysis."

When a practitioner becomes aware of his frames, he also becomes aware of the possibility for alternate ways of framing the reality of his practice. He takes note of the values and norms to which he has given priority, and those he has given less importance, or left out of the frame altogether...Frame analysis may help practitioners to become aware of their tacit frames and thereby lead them to experience the dilemmas inherent in professional pluralism. Once practitioners notice they actively construct the reality of their practice and become aware of the variety of frames available to them, they begin to see the need to reflect-in-action on their previous tacit frames.

Schön is basically saying, Put down your arms. In all professional practices, there are different schools of thought which often result in very different personal frames for practice. If we instead look at them as frames, we can consider and even move between them as necessary. For some projects, it may make sense to step outside of the frame of "interaction designer" and instead take on the frame of "interface designer" and visa versa."

The questions from the previous posting need to look to still be addressed and a summary of further thoughts of framing problems for my own context to be added....