Webbing, Not Framing!

“Framing the problem” is one of the most common phrases across research and design. In sociology, communication, psychology, policy, business, data science, and design, we are trained to frame—to define and structure a problem so that it can be studied, analyzed, and eventually solved.

Framing means setting limits: deciding what’s relevant and what’s not, what’s inside and what’s outside: A designer might frame a project around a specific functional need while overlooking its broader cultural context. A sociologist might frame social inequality as a structural issue rather than an individual failure—producing completely different questions, data, and outcomes. A business strategist might frame a market shift as a threat—or, alternatively, as an opportunity for transformation. Each frame defines what is visible, what matters, and what gets left out.

But framing can also trap us. Once we choose a frame, we decide – often unconsciously – what we will see and what we will ignore.Whatever doesn’t fit inside becomes noise, distraction, or irrelevance. The frame disciplines our attention, but it also flattens complexity.

It’s worth noticing how literal the metaphor is. A frame is static, rectangular, rigid—meant to hang on a wall. It focuses our view, but it also isolates; everything outside the edges disappears. Framing assumes the “problem” already exists somewhere out there, waiting to be found, defined, and fixed. Yet in many creative and research processes, problems are not found – they are made. So what if we approached inquiry differently?

Rhizomatic thinking offers an alternative: webbing instead of framing. Instead of isolating a single, pre-defined “problem,” webbing connects multiple threads – concepts, people, materials, disciplines, and perspectives – allowing unexpected relations to appear. A rhizomatic web doesn’t start from a fixed center; it grows in all directions, forming links between things that seem unrelated.

In design research, this means mapping insights from user behavior, cultural references, technologies, and material experiments into one evolving network of meanings. The goal is not to narrow the field but to expand it – seeing how new interconnections generate new ideas.

Rhizomatic mapping transforms the process from problem-solving to sense-making and opportunity-creating. It invites curiosity rather than control, exploration rather than fixation. It’s less about fixing a leak in the pipe and more about discovering an entire underground network—perhaps even adding a few new pipes (the musical kind).

Importantly, webbing doesn’t exclude framing – it includes it as one thread among many, but refuses to stop there. In complex, creative, and transdisciplinary work, the most fruitful ideas often grow from what lies just outside the frame.

So next time you start a project, try webbing first: let ideas connect, stretch, and surprise you.