The HCI community is well aware of the gap between research and practice in the field. The issue is often discussed in terms of the applicability and adaption of theories and methods to the real world, but both categories seem insufficient for explaining how practitioners navigate the complexity of the problems they work on. This study takes a more fundamental perspective, inspired by theories of reflective practice and design. As a consequence, the attention is shifted to the framing of a problem that happens prior—or in parallel—to the use of theories and methods. Six case studies were collected through semi-structured interviews to investigate this position. The findings point towards a rather small set of techniques which are used for supporting the (re-)framing of a problem in an often pragmatic and informal way. A model locating the methods in their respective stages is proposed; and the methods are related to other research to suggest additional possibilities not mentioned by the participants of this study. What most clearly distinguished HCI practitioners from designers in other professions was their distrust in their own intuition, and the key role they attached to the user in response.