The Heightened Language of Risk in Design Studio Education

Design education is centered around the concept of design studio. Design studio is a dedicated working space (Corazzo & Gharib, 2021)Corazzo, J. & Gharib, L., 2021. Everyday routines and material practices in the design studio: Why informal pedagogy matters. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 26(4), pp. 144-164. where students can store their materials and display their work-in-progress on the walls (Fallman, 2007)Fallman, D., 2007. Supporting studio culture in design research. s.l., s.n. and leave work unfinished—and return to it later—without having to remove it. It is also a practice of teaching that rejects formal lecture (Orr & Shreeve, 2018)Orr, S. & Shreeve, A., 2018. Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. New York: Routledge. and instead emphasizes impromptu demonstrations and discussions, one-on-one work between an instructor and a student (Hokanson, 2012)Hokanson, B., 2012. The design critique as a model for distributed learning. In: The next generation of distance education. Boston: Springer, pp. 71-82., and a more casual, unplanned feeling (Goldschmidt, et al., 2010)Goldschmidt, G., Hochman, H. & Dafni, I., 2010. The design studio "crit": Teacher–student communication. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, Volume 24, p. 285–302..

As a pedagogy, studio is well established and the qualities of studio education in educational practice are supported by a large body of scholarship. Research has examined the nature of reflective practice as a fundamental way that creative activities, such as architecture and design, are taught and learned (Schön, 1987, pp. 157-158)Schön, D. A., 1987. Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions.. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.. Critique, called the “active pedagogy of the studio” (Hokanson, 2012, p. 74)Hokanson, B., 2012. The design critique as a model for distributed learning. In: The next generation of distance education. Boston: Springer, pp. 71-82., has been examined as a form of shared practice, similar to improvisation (Adams, et al., 2017)Adams, R., Forin, T. R. & Joslyn, C. H., 2017. Approaches to coaching students in design reviews. Columbus, American Society For Engineering Education., as a way of learning with a coach (Goldschmidt, et al., 2010, p. 286)Goldschmidt, G., Hochman, H. & Dafni, I., 2010. The design studio "crit": Teacher–student communication. Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, Volume 24, p. 285–302., and even an exclusionary method that reinforces questionable historic precedent (Webster, 2007, p. 21)Webster, H., 2007. The analytics of power. Journal of Architectural Education, Volume 60, p. 21–27..

This body of research tends to look at studio as experienced and controlled by faculty, examining what instructors do, how they teach, the projects they assign, how they engage students, and how they assess work. A smaller but equally significant body of research identifies less visible forces that shape students’ experience of learning. When students and instructors collaborate on problems specific to a student and that student’s work, this creative intimacy occurs in an open environment, evidencing “a shift from learning as an individual cognitive activity… towards a socially distributed activity” (Corazzo, 2022, p. 3)Corazzo, J., 2022. Studio through studio: A diffractive reading of the educational design studio. Bilbao, Design Research Society.. Studio is an open room, and students hear the discussions. Cennamo and Brandt (2012, p. 849)Cennamo, K. & Brandt, C., 2012. The "right kind of telling": Knowledge building in the academic design studio. Educational Technology Research and Development, Volume 60, p. 849. describe how students engage in “listening-in,” observing one-on-one work-based discussions between peers and instructors. Over time, this social practice yields “strong cohesion among students and a sense of responsibility for one another over years of collegial enterprise” (Hill, 2016, p. 305)Hill, G., 2016. Drawn together: Student views of group work in design studio. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 33(4), pp. 293-308.. Shared space also allows students to learn from one another: iterations are “only good so far as they function in terms of eliciting feedback from peers” (Brandt, et al., 2013, p. 3)Brandt, C. et al., 2013. A theoretical framework for the studio as a learning environment. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, Volume 23, pp. 329-348.. Their work is externalized as a public audit trail, visible to other students; “What has been a very private process for the student is made public” (p. 4), supporting students’ self-awareness as designers.

The focus of this research is to examine this gaining of self-awareness that is argued to occur in the studio. How do the elements described above—trust, working publicly, working in close-proximity, being exposed to constant criticism, and being immersed in a cohort-structure—show up when a student begins to identify with being a designer?

We can look to language for clues to this process of identity development in studio.

Language is understood to actively construct social reality. Gee explains that we model language to make sense of the world around us through Discourse Models, which are “simplified, often unconscious and taken-for-granted theories about how the world works… we learn them from experiences we have had” and these experiences “are shaped and normed by the social and cultural groups to which we belong” (Gee, 2014, p. 71)Gee, J. P., 2014. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.. Discourse Models provide a way to understand how students may be both shaping and being shaped by studio culture.

Language also accompanies identity change in relationship to entry into a social group. Snow and Machalek argue that when someone fully “converts” to a new group and embraces a corresponding identity, it requires “the displacement of one universe of discourse by another or the ascendance of a formerly peripheral universe of discourse to the status of a primary authority” (Snow & Machalek, 1984, p. 170)Snow, D. A. & Machalek, R., 1984. The sociology of conversion. Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 10, pp. 167-190.. For example, when studying medical students undergoing this type of conversion, Pratt, et al. note that “stories played a role in these surgical residents’ understanding of what it meant to be in this organization and what it meant to be working so intensely” (Pratt, et al., 2006, p. 248)Pratt, M. G., Rockmann, K. W. & Kaufmann, J. B., 2006. Constructing professional identity: The role of work and identity learning cycles in the customization of identity among medical residents. The Academy of Management Journal, 49(2), pp. 235-262.; this is the type of identity-shift that may be occurring when students experience studio, and may be evidenced by the language they use and the stories they tell.

And, language indicates—and leads to—community membership. Lave and Wenger describe that as one becomes more centrally engaged in a community of practice, they begin to speak the language of others who have been more established within that group; “learning to become a legitimate participant in a community involves learning how to talk (and be silent) in the manner of full participants” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 105)Lave, J. & Wenger, E., 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.. An examination of language used by students provides insight into how strongly they see their identity tied to the group of these full participants in the design community.

The purpose of this study is to answer this primary research question: In the context of higher education, how do students describe their experiences in studio, and what does their language signal about their emergent designerly values and priorities? This study worked to answer this question by gathering data that is made up of what students say about qualities of their studio experience, treating their spoken language as the unit of data to be analyzed, interpreted, and theorized, and examining this data through an analytic lens supported by the arguments of Gee, Snow and Machalek, Pratt et al., and Lave and Wenger. This research centers language as data to be examined: words are not taken as proof of meaning, but as mechanisms by which meaning is constructed.

The results show that students use amplified language to describe studio and repeatedly frame their studio experiences through language of risk, intensity, endurance, and public vulnerability. The results also show that this language is used in support of a specific definition of a designer: a designer is said to be someone who makes new things, where high-stakes risk-taking is required to design novelty and innovation. These patterns suggest that students are learning not only how to behave in studio, but how to participate in a designerly discourse, raising questions about the values studio pedagogy may be advancing.

Language as a Representation of Designerly Values and Identity

Language Participates in the Construction of Social Reality

Language, argues James Paul Gee, is active; it has an intention and use that goes beyond communication, as the goal of language is to “support the performance of social activity and social identities, and to support human affiliation within cultures, social groups, and institutions” (Gee, 2014, p. 1)Gee, J. P., 2014. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.. The words we choose to use, the way in which we use them, and when (and if) we elect to speak or write construct situations. Language can be examined by asking not just what was said, but why this person was saying this thing in this way at this time. This question highlights motivations, as language establishes what is normal, valuable, or acceptable; as Gee explains, “the whole point of grammar, in speech or writing, is in fact to allow us to create just such political perspectives” (p. 4).

Language also makes identities recognizable. Words are selectively used, as various words or attributes “hang together” in order to describe a larger whole. These words are evidence of acceptance of a specific community’s way of understanding (or theorizing), and the process of exclusion and inclusion is the acceptance of that theory. These theories are culturally unique, and aren’t accepted continually or consistently across groups. Gee names these “Discourse models” and proposes that these are used to understand complicated realities; they are “the largely unconscious theories we hold that help us make sense of texts, and the world” (Gee, 2014, p. 71)Gee, J. P., 2014. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.. Discourses are overall elements of identity building; they are the narratives we tell ourselves, and others, about ourselves. A key to knowing when a given Discourse is functioning is when there is recognition: when the various elements of language, action, interaction, values, beliefs, symbols, objects, tools, and places are put together so the who and what are deemed correct by those who encounter it (p.91).

Gee emphasizes that one of the most important and compelling qualities of Discourse is that it is constructive, not merely descriptive. When people speak, their words act to construct more than just conversations; their words help construct themselves as they are projected to others in the world: Discourse models “’pro-ject’ onto that world, from where we ‘stand’ (where we are socially positioned), certain viewpoints about what is right and wrong, what can or cannot be done to solve problems in the world” (Gee, 2014, p. 88)Gee, J. P., 2014. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.. Fundamentally, Gee argues a principle of linguistic reflexivity: language comes from a situation and simultaneously changes that situation.

Language Change Accompanies Identity Change

Gee explores the social nature of language; others have examined the relationship between language and identity. Snow and Machalek (1984) indicate that changes in language are the “displacement of one universe of discourse by another or the ascendance of a formerly peripheral universe of discourse to the status of a primary authority” (p. 170). When someone begins using new language, they may be indicating changes in their views of themselves; this is the adoption of a “master attribution scheme,” where “feelings, behaviors, and events formerly interpreted with reference to a number of causal schemes are now interpreted from the standpoint of one pervasive scheme” (p. 173).

Another way language change accompanies identity change is through the use of stories and storytelling. Pratt et al. (2006) state that “when who you are does not match what you do, you can improve your performance and/or how you view yourself” (p. 253). This offers a curious positioning of identity-development as something that is largely voluntary and controllable. The authors claim that this is most common—"identity is more likely to change to fit the work than vice versa” (p. 254)—and they argue that “making sense of identification within a social group is a pragmatic choice.” Those learning to be professionals, the authors argue, often compare what they do to expectations about who they are, as a way to “motivate the construction process of identity” (p. 256). Stories help explain this claim of pragmatism and active construction of identity, as stories are “the raw materials of a wide ‘identity set’ that individuals can draw upon to construct identity” (p. 255). Storytelling offers an opportunity for people to try on the language associated with a unique identity.

Snow & Machalek argue that adoption of a new discourse signals identity change. Pratt et al. show that stories are one of the ways learners adopt the new discourse.

Language Indicates, and Leads To, Community Membership

As shown above, a change in language begins to hint at identity shift. It also serves as a clue of a shift in community membership, or what Lave and Wenger theorize as peripheral participation: to fully engage in skill and knowledge of a community, learners must also move towards “full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community” (1991, p. 29)Lave, J. & Wenger, E., 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.. This is the way a novice becomes part of a community of practice. Apprenticeship, often thought of as “learning by doing,” provides sustained opportunities for a learner to “develop a view of what the whole enterprise is about, and what there is to be learned” (p. 93). But situated learning is larger than simply learning in a space where work is done, or learning by doing; the move from apprenticeship to situated learning is based on the fundamental argument that “there is no activity that is not situated” (p. 33).

Lave and Wenger argue that generalized, abstract knowledge is meaningless until applied, and that “knowledge domains” of specific skills, methods, and facts are intertwined in “becoming a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by these systems of relations” (1991, p. 53). This is identity development, a continuing process shaped by changing community “membership.”

Lave and Wenger argue that the “key to legitimate peripherality is access by newcomers to the community of practice and all that membership entails” (1991, p. 100). Access to the language of the community provides legitimacy into existing in the peripherality and moving towards participation: it is a way of claiming participation. As with Pratt et al, (2006) stories are a large part of that claim. Lave and Wenger quote Jordan in showing that “stories, then, are packages of situated knowledge” (1991, p. 108). Telling a story is a way of displaying membership.

Learning, fundamentally, is a trajectory of and towards participation. Situated learning is based on a desire by newcomers to become full practitioners, which requires knowing, and that knowing emerges from experiences of understanding the world situated in the context of what should be learned. Language, particularly when presented as stories, serves to both showcase developing membership in a new group, and to actively solidify that membership.

Language and Identity as a Framework for Understanding Students

Together, these scholars show that language participates in the construction of social reality and identity. Gee frames language as reflexive: it builds a situation, comes from a situation, and changes that situation. Snow and Machalek describe language as a signal of integration into a new group. Pratt et al. show stories as a means of constructing identity during difficult work, while Lave and Wenger describe language as a way people move into practice from the periphery.

Analyzing design students’ discourse can therefore show how students try on language while becoming practitioners, revealing whether designerly activities, attitudes, and skills are viewed as belonging to others, or to themselves. Language use is a strong, meaningful view into the identity work a student is performing, and their words serve as indicators of their engagement with designerly group norms and values.

Study Design

Following the theoretical commitment to language as a means of identity construction, the study methodology was designed to generate data constituted of students’ language about particular studio topics. Data was gathered through two mechanisms: interviews and self-produced short videos (“selfies”) prompted by text message.

Students were recruited through advertisements posted to public forums, including LinkedIn, and through faculty-centered public discussion threads, where instructors were asked to forward the request to students. Students were selected if they were English speakers living in the United States at the time of research; over 18 years old; enrolled as undergraduates, or the equivalent at a non-traditional program; taking an in-person design studio course in a form-giving design field, such as industrial design, graphic design, user experience design, or a similar field; owned a mobile phone; and were enrolled in a college, university, or educational program of at least one year in duration. Efforts were made to include only one student from any school.

Selected students were informed of the protocol and provided informed consent. They completed an initial 30-minute semi-structured Zoom interview about their course of study, program experiences, and studio context. Over the following five weeks, students received weekly text prompts asking them to respond to a question or theme by filming a short video and uploading it to a secure Google Drive. Students then completed a closing 60-minute semi-structured Zoom interview focused on their prompt responses, clarification, and additional detail. Students were compensated as they completed each section of the study. After all research activities were completed, data were analyzed as described below.

Prompt Process, In Detail

A significant part of data collection leveraged text-message prompts and video-based responses. This approach to data collection builds on Larson & Csikszentmihalyi’s (1992Larson, R. & Csikszentmihalyi, M., 1992. Validity and reliability of the experience-sampling method. In: M. de Vries, ed. The experience of psychopathology: Investigating mental disorders in their natural settings. s.l.:Cambridge University Press, p. 43–57.) Experience-Sampling Method, extends the Selfie Study approach (Kolko, 2025)Kolko, J., 2025. Generative design through selfies. interactions, 32(2), pp. 22-23., and leverages video diary-making methodological principles and techniques introduced by Whiting et al. (2018Whiting, R., Roby, H., Symon, G. & Chamakiotis, P., 2018. Participant-led video diaries. In: A. Bryman & D. A. Buchanan, eds. Unconventional methodology in organization and management research. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 190-211.) and Lau and Bratby (2024Lau, A. & Bratby, M., 2024. Collecting qualitative data via video statements in the digital era. Labour and Industry, 34(2), pp. 101-113.).

This method encouraged students to describe a topic in the context of a particular space, typically their studio, apartment, or dorm room. Over the duration of the study, each student received the same text prompts in the same sequence, asking them to respond by creating and sending a 3- to 5-minute video. Prompts asked students to (a) film and narrate a tour of their studio, (b) show and describe a recent project and any critique they received in class, (c) describe the work style and content of a student they respect, (d) compare visual examples of studio spaces to their own studio spaces, and (e) respond, based on their own experiences, to hypothetical examples of things they might overhear a professor say, such as “we have a strong studio culture.”

This method was appropriate because studio culture involves relationships among designers, spaces, people, and objects. Prompt-based video responses allowed students to frame their own answers, revealed student-driven selection criteria, and provided a view into what they noticed, valued, and felt. Because photo and video capture are normalized through social media, participants could capture, upload, and describe media with little or no training, and could respond on their own schedules. Since this study analyzed language, the method centered students’ words as the primary data generated and analyzed.

Ethics and Data Collection

This study was approved by the researcher’s institution’s Institutional Review Board and included gaining verbal informed consent from each study participant. The recorded interviews, prompt responses, and transcripts were stored on a secure university drive with access restricted to the researcher. Personally identifiable information was removed from the transcripts, and participants were given pseudonyms, which are used throughout the remainder of this text.

Data Analysis

To analyze and synthesize the data generated during this study, the content was viewed through a lens of discourse analysis. Discourse analysis requires a commitment to the nature of words as active constructions of ideas, where ideas are brought to life through speech. Analysis was based on James Paul Gee’s (2014, pp. 94-117)Gee, J. P., 2014. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. 4th ed. New York: Routledge. “Seven Building Tasks of Language,” which prioritizes how things were said over what was said; points of linguistic escalation or trivialization provide clues into attitudes, priorities, and social ways of being.

Transcriptions of all data collected produced 6,185 unique utterances for analysis. Primary activities described in these utterances were then noted in brief phrases. For example, when participant five explained that he put “literal blood, sweat and tears into the work on the project,” an activity phrase “working on a class project” was generated. Next, the construction of the language was examined to understand if these activities were being verbally escalated, and if they were, a discursive explanation was provided. Escalation was evidenced by the use of metaphor, analogy, simile, colloquialisms, effusiveness, and expansive characterizations. For example, blood, sweat, and tears are words indicative of pain, demanding physical labor, and intense emotion. The participant described how they “put” these qualities into their work. A discursive explanation is that “course work is created through a contribution of pain [through blood], toil [through sweat], and crying [through tears].”

This example of rhetorical interpretation is shown below:

Relationships between activity phrases were then examined for patterns and anomalies; for example, another student explained that “I'm happy at the end of the semester when you have a product in the hand, and you've done so much, and you're, like, looking back as to, like, you were crying all over the process, but… it's done.” Both utterances escalate project work through crying and tears and were considered together. Similar statements were summarized in short discourse paragraphs, each describing a unique way students used language to escalate activities. A narrative synthesis then integrated primary elements of each discourse, resulting in the findings and discussion below.

Findings: Heightened Intensity and Risk-Taking, In Support of Novelty and Innovation

Students in this research study describe studio activities with language of heightened intensity, using words and phrases more commonly associated with critical incidents than with education. This language is used to characterize seemingly straight-forward experiences as those requiring great risk, and risk-taking is positioned as a uniformly valuable and encouraged requirement for producing new and novel ideas. These findings are described in detail below.

Studio Activities Are Described Using Language of Heightened Intensity

Throughout this research, students regularly use elevated language to describe their experiences in studio. This language uses strong modifiers [“crazy, huge, insane”], makes sweeping generalizations [“constantly, forever, everyone”], and amplifies activities that one would consider everyday or routine to a point of extreme emotional significance.

Violent Imagery and a Fear of Physical and Emotional Harm

Studio, a place thought of as rich with creative opportunity, is characterized by students as a space that is physically and emotionally dangerous. Language typically reserved for conflict is attributed to everyday occurrences, and violent imagery is used to describe project and course work.

In explaining his work ethic, Phil—a sophomore Industrial Design student—recalls that a project required him to work through the night without sleeping; it was this project where, as described above, Phil recalls putting “literal blood, sweat, and tears” into his work. He goes on to describe his cohort as engaging in “a lot of trauma bonding” during late nights in the studio. Latika, a Senior Industrial Design student, states that students “start to trauma bond” when they are in the studio: “you know, we all are just like crying together.” Later, she describes those tears as “tears of pain.” Nelana, studying Graphic Design, also refers to studio as an “overwhelming” experience, and that particularly during finals, the “environment adds to that bonding, like a trauma bond.”

All students used language associated with anxiety, worry, fear, stress, and pressure. In discussing the practice of critique, Allison said it was an “anxiety-inducing thing.” Giada explained that she was scared of the professor she would have next quarter, Nikky described being scared to try new things, Hana said she was afraid of raising her hand, Tingbing said he was scared of the upcoming project, Kalie described being nervous and anxious about her work not being as good as someone else’s, and Mandee explained that during the subjective practice of critique, “answering a question that I don’t know one-hundred-percent if I’m right or wrong is nerve-wracking.” Candice explained that in her class, the professor had the students line up their projects in a row from what they, as a group, considered to be best to worst, and then assigned grades based on that sequence; she noted that she was “very scared this would pit us against each other.”

A Need for Safety and Security

Language of safety, security, and trust are also regularly used, often in juxtaposition to the language of danger and harm. Nelana describes that a strong studio is a “safe space… it’s, like, non-judging. It’s a place where it’s okay to feel like your work is bad without feeling judged.” Nikky explains that “going into a conversation not expecting anything [is] what creates a good studio culture, just creating a good, comfortable, safe dynamic.” Giada describes that the intimacy of studio requires trust that is “genuine.” She explains that this form of trust shows up primarily during critique, which hinges on honesty: “If you don't trust these people, if you don't trust their opinion, and just, honestly, like, their character and how they are as a person, then, you know, that feedback isn't really gonna be productive at all.” While some students express that it is also important to trust their peers to not take or use their materials, the majority of comments about social trust are related to these conversational aspects of studio: critique and presentation.

Amplified Effort and Consequences, Generalizations, and Overstatements

Students frame studio work as dire, where extreme amounts of effort are required because the stakes are high and outcomes are consequential. Candice notes that one approach to success in studio requires long hours, but “you can also succeed in studio without having to like kill yourself—by staying in studio for like 12-14 hours a day and like just spending your whole life in there.” Nikky explains that her “first week of industrial design was the hardest week of my life.” Latika describes herself as having thick skin in a critique, as “someone else would have, like, shattered” based on the way a professor responded to her work. These are examples of language being used to amplify the effort required to succeed in studio, and the high stakes of failure.

When describing the nature of studio, students use language that makes generalizations and is likely overstated. Candice explains that students believe that “whoever spends the most time in studio, whoever pulls the most all-nighters in the studio, like always has the best work.” She clarifies that while she personally doesn’t think this is true, she feels that her peers hold this attitude, which causes a “toxic” environment. Hanah explains that “there's never really a time where you're not doing something for a studio course.” Some of the generalizations are kind, as Nikky notes that “everything is just about collaboration here. I think, because everyone knows each other, everyone's responsible for taking care of each other.” Phil, Kalie, Allison, and Latika all use similarly broad and endearing language related to caring and nurturing, emphasizing that students always take care of each other. In the majority of these cases, this is attributed to the necessity for support in the face of harm.

Risk-taking Is Described as Valuable and Encouraged

All students use language of risk in describing their studio experience, and all students frame risk as something that is to be embraced—a quality or action that is desirable. Unprompted language of risk is used generously and in many different ways, and risk is often rhetorically connected to innovation, novelty, and being different.

A Perpetual Conversation of Risk, Broadly and Inconsistently Defined

Discussion of risk is pervasive in the research data. Risk-taking is used to characterize trying new design approaches, using new materials, making things that people haven’t seen before, purposefully ignoring deadlines, and failing to complete assignments.

Students describe that they have a “comfort zone” and that it is important to leave that comfortable space during the process of design. For Mandee, this means selecting a brand for her fashion-design project that is less known—”a risk would be picking a brand that you yourself don’t know much about.” Giada indicates that remaining comfortable means she will never achieve what she is capable of. Chris describes that his comfort zone is when he uses a predictable aesthetic style, noting that he’s “working on putting more, like, texture and text, sort of a maximalism” into his work, which he further notes is a risky thing to try. Uniquely, Chris explains that the stakes of this risk are low—”If it's, like, maybe a little bit risky, but it's something that I've never done, never, like, have any experience watching people done it before, I would still do it, because it doesn't cost anything, right? It doesn't cost anything.”

Nelana was assigned to create a poster, “an A1 poster, which is, like, huge. But the professor was, like, ‘but what is a poster? Like, really push what a poster is.’ And so people came up with a lot of different interpretations. One of my best friends, she created, like, a calendar on, like, a spiral binding. When [the professor] was showing previous examples, like, there were so many different interpretations of how you could really stretch that A1 measurement, and I think that helps us take risks. They don't really penalize you, they reward you for taking those risks.” Ultimately, Nelana explains that she took a risk by creating a phone application rather than a printed poster.

Some actions are characterized as being brave in the face of risk. In referring to another student, Candice explains that “she isn't afraid to trash an iteration if she feels like it doesn't look the way she wants it to. I feel like this is something that I struggle with a lot.” Critique is consistently offered as a situation where bravery and confidence are required; Hana explains that “sometimes it's very nerve-racking, especially in critique, to really put your work out there and to really be confident enough to accept criticism and to not take it to heart.” In these cases, the stakes are not made clear—students do not describe what might happen if they were to take criticism to heart or to shy away from throwing away an unpleasing design.

In addition to these views of risk, some students use risk-taking language to define design itself; Giada explains that “the whole point of design is to keep learning and growing, and considering the world around you, and taking from that, and taking risks.” And, risk-taking is tied to success; when asked what message she might hypothetically communicate to herself earlier in her education, Nicole said “Don't be afraid to take risks. And, just keep working towards, like, what you feel confident about, even though maybe you won't get as much support in your personal life, just… Make sure that you're staying true to yourself creatively. Rather than trying to impress someone. And then you'll prove to yourself, like, you can do good. You can succeed.”

A Relationship to Innovation, Novelty, and Being Different

Students repeatedly explain that taking a risk means trying a new design style, or developing a new idea—that to do something new, novel or unexpected is to take a chance. Nicole says that “this past collection or project that I've been working on, it was focused a lot on deviating from your standard pieces of clothing. And then, like, I just, like, think that as I progress more with my skills and my work, I want to take that risk and, like, push away from what is considered normal. So, I'd rather take the risk and do something. Do something, do it wrong. And then learn from that, and try again, than just play the safe route, and not worry.” Safety, here, is framed as doing something normal which is a worry-free approach. Risk, for Nicole, is to design an outfit that has atypical characteristics (in her case, using a star shape for a zipper on a vest).

Allison likens coming up with ideas that are innovative to writing, explaining that “it can be very tough sometimes because being in the design field, how you have writer's block, you definitely have like the same, you have the same thing. I don't know if there's an actual term for it, designer's block I guess.” This is a state of being in a “rut,” where she is unable to come up with ideas that haven’t been tried before. Hana describes that she values collaborating with a friend, who would “come up with a lot of ideas that I never thought about”—new ideas, for Hana, are said to be more important than old or established ideas. Latika attributes the need for new ideas to the faculty, who “really make us think out of the box… like, there’s every single thing existing already.” These faculty, she explains, encourage students to think about “what technology you can add” to make an idea differentiated.

Discussion

The language and identity theories of Gee, Snow & Machalek, Pratt et al., and Lave & Wenger, taken in combination, suggest that repeated participation in a type of discourse contributes to identity formation, and this in turn suggests that students in studio are developing a certain type of designerly identity. When students use intense language to describe taking risks, they are offering clues that they may be developing an identity of an intense risk-taker. They are also provoking a question of where this language may be originating.

Ambiguity, Presented as Risk

Scholarly research indicates that studio holds traditions of risk-taking and failure. The “idea of risk-taking as a valued student behavior has been present in Western art and design education for many years” (Orr & Shreeve, 2018, p. 47)Orr, S. & Shreeve, A., 2018. Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. New York: Routledge.. It is a “valorized practice that is so mainstream within art and design education” that it is rarely questioned. The practice is evidenced in many of the artifacts, activities, and norms of studio practice.

Design projects often begin with a project brief that frames the assignment (Brandt, et al., 2013)Brandt, C. et al., 2013. A theoretical framework for the studio as a learning environment. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, Volume 23, pp. 329-348.. But a brief is short—often just a page—and is vague (Orr & Shreeve, 2018, p. 109)Orr, S. & Shreeve, A., 2018. Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. New York: Routledge.. It is reasonable that people who encounter such ambiguity may shy away from it; Stein (1974, p. 24)Stein, M. I., 1974. Stimulating creativity. New York(NY): Academic Press, Inc., referring to this initial engagement with such a brief as a hypothesis-generation state, notes that “to embark on the hypothesis formation stage in the creative process frequently takes much courage and self-confidence.” A brief presents constraints, rather than rules, yet in studio even these constraints can be ignored. A fundamental quality of design is reframing, or “the act of purposefully shifting the normative frame, often temporarily or in multiple directions at once, in order to see things from a new perspective” (Kolko, 2010)Kolko, J., 2010. Sensemaking and framing: A theoretical reflection on perspective in design synthesis. Montreal, Design Research Society.. For a student, reframing requires selectively rejecting or accepting what has been assigned to them, and treating rules as flexible. To begin working on a project brief means a student must immediately make some decisions on their own that shape the assignment criteria. They must begin a project by acting as an authority figure—they are already beginning to take chances and even though they have only just started, “students are forced to take a stance from the earliest stages in an art and design course” (Orr & Shreeve, 2018, p. 115)Orr, S. & Shreeve, A., 2018. Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. New York: Routledge..

Creativity, Equated to Harm

The elevated language of physical and emotional harm by students in this study is notable. Tyagi et al. make a distinction between a risk in a creative behavior and in a risk of physical harm, where “the risk of being ‘different’ is more important in creativity than risks that endanger limbs or life” (Tyagi, et al., 2017, p. 2)Tyagi, V. et al., 2017. The risky side of creativity: Domain-specific risk taking in creative individuals. Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 8.. Yet students continually use absolute language to describe being in danger; when Phil explains that he put “literal blood, sweat and tears into the work on the project,” the escalation—with a rhetorical use of the word literal —serves to equalize his creative risk (in this case, a risk of meeting a deadline on time) with one of real, physical danger.

It may be that this escalation is a way of describing more than just work ethic and ability to meet deadlines. It may also point to an offensive stance against future criticism from an instructor, criticism that time spent exploring was time that could have been spent completing. Pratt et al (2006) argue that “when one receives (mostly negative) feedback, one is expected to improve performance” (p. 253). Anticipating the regular practice of critique may motivate the use of heightened language. Perseverance in language use may also be defensive—a “courage of one’s convictions” (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995, p. 287)Sternberg, R. J. & Lubart, T. I., 1995. Defying the crowd: Cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity. New York: Free Press.—where making more things is argued to be a better approach, and the designer “must be willing to take risks and to go beyond his or her first creative ideas and generate others.” An exploration may lead nowhere, and this time could be argued to have been “wasted”—a risk of exploration staked a chance to miss a deadline. Such escalated language showcases the importance that was placed on that exploration instead of the output.

Scholarly work has drawn comparisons between studio and power, particularly in the practice of critique. The crit, it is argued, produces subjects who accept professional authority (Webster, 2007, p. 21)Webster, H., 2007. The analytics of power. Journal of Architectural Education, Volume 60, p. 21–27.. Adversarial discussion may disengage weaker students, who perceive the attack as confirmation of failure (Blair, 2007)Blair, B., 2007. At the end of a huge crit in the summer, it was crap I’d worked really hard but all she said was fine and I was gutted. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, Volume 5, p. 83–95.. In a survey by Sara and Parnell (2013, p. 113), students valued critique in principle, but remembered fear and humiliation in practice, suggesting that adversarial critique undermines the learning it intends to enable. Fine (2018, p. 113)Fine, G. A., 2018. Talking art: The culture of practice and the practice of culture in MFA education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. explains that, in the confrontational critiques he observed, “students are encouraged to be authentic and dramatic, and deviance is tolerated.” This creates a tenuous presentation of self, where “fear and anxiety are magnified… especially given the public humiliation of critiques” (p. 114). These critiques are constant and evaluation is continuous and often negative, as “one is haunted by failure, and some students are judged as failures.” Anxiety in a studio is high, and anxieties “are intensified immediately before critiques… stress is common… failure is not merely technical, but a failure of self.”

The language students use in this study exemplifies these ideas, and extend them beyond any one practice; language of fear and anxiety are used comprehensively, not only in reference to critique.

Critique, as a Venue for Social Risks

In education, mistake-making is argued to benefit learning by creating opportunities for growth and offering evidence that learning is occurring. Soutter and Clark (2021Soutter, M. & Clark, S., 2021. Building a culture of intellectual risk-taking: Isolating the pedagogical elements of the Harkness method. Journal of Education, 203(3).) argue that when mistakes are judged, students “become reluctant to try anything new for fear of failure and what failure says about them” (p. 1). Scholarly work has tied “intellectual risk-taking” to mastery, defining it as “engaging in learning by contributing an idea, question, or creative thought regardless of potential errors or judgements” (p. 2). The authors explain that “any academic behavior that might result in an unpleasant result or consequence in the classroom… can be considered risky or courageous academic behavior.” Creativity risk-taking also includes domain-specific social risks related to appearance and differentness, such as “presenting a radical idea to a social group, unveiling a new artwork at an exhibition, publishing a collection of stories or poems… [these actions] are risky since there is always some uncertainty associated with the social evaluations” (p. 7).

Critique is a normalized studio process where students publicly take a stance on someone else’s creative work. This practice is considered fundamental to learning to be a practitioner, alongside the acquisition of technical skills. Some scholars argue that critique is not an isolated practice but defines the educational experience, where “the tradition of ongoing and reciprocal performance punctuated by criticism is so central to the pedagogy of the design studio that it is not considered assessment at all. Rather, it is the essence of instruction” (Cossentino, 2002, p. 44)Cossentino, J., 2002. Importing artistry: Further lessons from the design studio. Reflective Practice, 3(1), pp. 39-52.. In critique, students and faculty offer opinions, comments, and framing about presented work. Some instructors lead critique at both a surface level and a “meta-level,” describing approaches such as comparing, contrasting, using constructive language, and being specific as students use them.

Critique often focuses on a particular aspect of a particular piece of work, but participation in the Discourse of critique requires students to relate what they know to what they are experiencing. Gee calls this “recognition work” (2014, p. 88Gee, J. P., 2014. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.): using moment-to-moment clues to make sense of the Discourse being presented, and then reflecting on it later. In critique, recognition work becomes public through naming and labeling, assigning external meaning to the work and changing it over time. This includes pointing out things that are poorly done, calling attention to mistakes, and doing so publicly so others can also see them. Although this behavior is not encouraged in everyday life, faculty view it as important for students to “learn to become critical” (Dannels, 2005, p. 148)Dannels, D. P., 2005. Performing tribal rituals: A genre analysis of 'crits' in design studios. Communication Education, Volume 54, p. 136–160., and “students providing feedback to their peers is a key aspect in the development of professional norms that are expected of design graduates” (Healy, 2016, p. 7)Healy, J. P., 2016. The components of the "crit" in art and design education. Irish Journal of Academic Practice, 5(1)..

Students begin to learn the use of designerly metaphors appropriately; when they are able to speak of design, “it is an indication that they have understood and are becoming part of the community of practice” (Orr & Shreeve, 2018, p. 28)Orr, S. & Shreeve, A., 2018. Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. New York: Routledge.. Through critique, students learn to talk about design—to adopt, adapt, or challenge disciplinary vocabulary, to frame decisions confidently, and to treat their work not as precious but as provisional. They learn to give and receive feedback, to engage in disagreement productively, and to translate conflict into dialogue.

Instructors’ Modeling

Faculty themselves may be a source of heightened language about risk-taking. In Sawyer’s research (2019)Sawyer, R. K., 2019. Dialogic status in design education: Authority and peer relations in studio class conversations. Social Psychology Quarterly, 82(4), pp. 407-430., students discussed work with a professor fluidly, suggesting a strong relational foundation that likely emerged through “modeling,” where an “instructor [offers] both explicit and tacit guidance into the norms of what constitutes 'good design' or productive design practices” (Cennamo & Brandt, 2012, p. 850)Cennamo, K. & Brandt, C., 2012. The "right kind of telling": Knowledge building in the academic design studio. Educational Technology Research and Development, Volume 60, p. 839–858.. Students see an authority figure “failing” on purpose through iteration; offering public, negative criticism; making a mess; being playful verbally and through modeled sketching; and giving suggestions before advising students to disregard them. Orr and Shreeve (2018, p. 119)Orr, S. & Shreeve, A., 2018. Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. New York: Routledge. indicate that “lecturers will sometimes tell students to ignore their advice.”

Becoming designerly is about entering into a new community (Corazzo & Gharib, 2021)Corazzo, J. & Gharib, L., 2021. Everyday routines and material practices in the design studio: Why informal pedagogy matters. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 26(4), pp. 144-164.; in the studio, students internalize the culture of design and begin to see themselves as part of that larger community of design practice. Studio “serves as a bridge between academic and professional communities” (Corazzo, 2019, p. 1256)Corazzo, J., 2019. Materialising the studio: A systematic review of the role of the material space of the studio in art, design and architecture education. The Design Journal, Volume 22, p. 1249–1265.. This is an experience that is not yet part of gaining peripheral participation but is also not a simple duplication of a real-world studio environment. In this context, faculty “broker” interactions between academic studio and post-academic studio, slowly “making explicit tacit rules of design practice for students” (Brandt, et al., 2013)Brandt, C. et al., 2013. A theoretical framework for the studio as a learning environment. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, Volume 23, pp. 329-348.. As students move from peripheral participation toward more central roles, they learn to interpret and inhabit the culture of design. This involves learning tacit expectations: how to explore ideas, respond to feedback, collaborate, and navigate the uncertainty that defines creative work.

The presence of studio-centric conversation can be seen when exploring the lineage of a particular design program. For example, schools that center development of form in their curriculum may pedagogically embrace Rowena Reed Kostellow’s argument that “pure, unadulterated beauty should be the goal of civilization” (The Rowena Group, 2026)The Rowena Group, 2026. History. [Online - Accessed 1 May 2026]., and this narrative of design as beauty may underpin the language used by instructors; similarly, schools that focus on design as problem solving may endorse Herb Simon’s (1988)Simon, H. A., 1988. The science of design: Creating the artificial. Design Issues, 4(1/2), pp. 67-82. view that “everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” (p. 67), and a more positivist view of design may then pervade the literal and figurative discussion in studio. Countless other ways of considering design are present in and across different educational institutions, modeled in similar ways by instructors.

Discussing their work with a professor, as McDonald et al. (2018)McDonald, J. K., Rich, P. J. & Gubler, N. B., 2018. The perceived value of informal, peer critique in the instructional design studio. TechTrends, Volume 63, p. 149–159. observe, helps students develop professional language, decision-making confidence, and the capacity to frame their work persuasively. Through their talk, gestures, and critiques, they signal belonging to a professional culture. Students learn to talk like designers and to situate their ideas within a broader discourse; “even if studio conversations are just part of the education,” Svensson and Edström (2011, p. 22)Svensson, L. & Edström, A.-M., 2011. The function of art students' use of studio conversations in relation to their art work. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 12(5). describe, “it is the one that is generally considered most important.” Telling a story is a way of displaying membership, and as educators tell stories of innovation, this helps students enter the social system of design-as-innovation. Conversation in the design studio distributes voice, models professional speaking approaches, and teaches students how to navigate power hierarchies through talk—hierarchies that are common in large corporations.

The Influence of Professional Practice

The language of studio is in part a product of the language of industry. Designers have tended to see their work as risky and requiring courage and a sense of fearlessness; they have rhetorically tied this need to the importance of their work. Paul Rand, the designer responsible for the graphic identity of IBM, UPS, and ABC, describes how “to function creatively, the artist must have the courage to fight for what he believes” (1971)Rand, P., 1971. Integrity and invention. In: W. Herdeg, ed. Graphis annual '71/72. s.l.:The Graphis Press, p. Introduction.. Designers make things like logos, but elevate the things and their making through these types of intense language and claims. Karim Rashid, a well-known and respected industrial designer (who designs consumer items, such as vacuum cleaners), describes that design is “about the betterment of our lives poetically, aesthetically, experientially, sensorially, and emotionally” (2016)Rashid, K., 2016. The Future of Design. Toronto: IIDEXCanada.. Architecture, according to some architects, is not simply about buildings; it has been defined by Mies van der Rohe (1947)Mies van der Rohe, L., 1947. Architecture and the times (1924). In: Mies van der Rohe. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, pp. 186-187. as “the will of an epoch translated into space.” These designers have worked rhetorically to elevate objects, images, and their design process to an extraordinarily important level.

This provocative link between designers and risk-taking is repeated continually in the context of modern design; even the most banal change can be viewed as one that takes fearlessness, as is the case with a headphone jack on a phone: “Some people have asked why would we remove the analog headphone jack in the iPhone… [it] really comes down to one word: courage. Courage to move on, do something new, that betters all of us. And our team has tremendous courage” (Waddell, 2016)Waddell, K., 2016. Apple’s ‘courageous’ leap. [Online - Accessed 24 April 2026].. This is not unlike the student who described her courage in reframing her A1 poster as a mobile application, or another who added a star shape to a zipper.

While popular and professional sources are not typically treated as scholarly evidence, these mainstream examples illustrate the language available within design culture and the rhetorical resources through which ideas about design and designer identity are communicated. This view from practitioners implies a relationship between taking creative risks, self-sufficiency, and career readiness that is echoed in scholarly work. Choi, et al. (2018)Choi, J., Payne, A., Hart, P. & Brown, A., 2018. Creative risk-taking: Developing strategies for first year university students in the creative industries. The International Journal of Art & Design Education, Volume 38, pp. 73-89. argue that students are required to “have a willingness to take creative risks when they respond to creative challenges, producing original, innovative outcomes” (p. 1). Creativity and innovation are generally considered valuable qualities to bring to professional practice; “preparing for the creative industries,” the authors argue, “requires developing capacities in both creativity and innovation” (p. 2). Their subsequent empirical activities are based, in part, on Steers’ view that “orthodoxy is the antithesis of creativity.” Creativity, it is argued, must be novel and even break established rules (Steers, 2009, p. 127)Steers, J., 2009. Creativity: Delusions, realities, opportunities and challenges. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 28(2), pp. 126-138..

By positioning design as a courageous discipline of risk-taking in support of innovation, designers offer a rhetorical stance of otherness: of having tastes and skills that are unique to them, and that others do not possess. Designers are capable, from their vantage outside of society, to see what is current and what is wrong with society. And designers do more than simply articulate problems; they manifest solutions, and those solutions are amplified through size and scale. In Mies van der Rohe’s career as an architect, he created over thirty major buildings (Mies van der Rohe Society, n.d.)Mies van der Rohe, L., 1947. Architecture and the times (1924). In: Mies van der Rohe. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, pp. 186-187.; a garbage can designed by Rashid sold 1.5 million units at Target (Hamilton, 2000)Hamilton, W. L., 2000. Design notebook; designers find you can't live on buzz. The New York Times, 21 September, pp. Section F, Page 1.. Because their creations are produced and considered at a massive scale, items like a garbage can become circular proof of the designer’s value—designers make things, and characterize their process as risky; the things are mass-produced and generate revenue; risk-taking is affirmed as being critical for business success, as are designers as the takers of risk.

Risk-Taking as a Designerly Conversation

Gee argues that “Big C conversations” are the social themes that are “in the air” about a given topic. The swirling around of these ideas in a social group constitutes the “public debates, arguments, motifs, issues, or themes” relevant to that group (Gee, 2014, p. 49)Gee, J. P., 2014. An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.. Language that is selected can purposefully reference or be used in these Conversations. Notably, Gee argues that one can participate in a Conversation without knowing the background or history of it; participation has a low barrier to entry and does not require any material experience of knowledge. It is reasonable that the language of innovation and risk-taking constitute these motifs, issues, and themes floating in the air of professional design practice, and that in studio, students begin to speak of these topics.

Shaffer (2007, p. 121)Shaffer, D. W., 2007. Learning in design. In: Foundations for the future in mathematics education. s.l.:Erlbaum, pp. 99-126. explains that design education is unique in that “students were not merely solving problems; they were engaged in an iterative process of expressing—and thus shaping—their identities.” A student may say, “I am not like a designer—I am a designer,” and following Snow and Machalek (1984, p. 173)Snow, D. A. & Machalek, R., 1984. The sociology of conversion. Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 10, pp. 167-190., this statement brings with it all of the group’s common causes and missions.

When a student begins to speak like a designer, the conclusion may be drawn that students are using language that they learn in the studio, and the choice (both purposeful and unconscious) to use that language is representative of a new identity they are forming. One can similarly infer that the language reflects the values that instructors are showing, building, or encouraging, or the pedagogy they are using. These values may, in turn, reflect the way designers in industry have worked to position themselves as risk-takers and their work as elevated in importance and impact.

Conclusion

The goal of this research was to understand the language students use to describe design studio. What emerged is a language of studio culture—a culture described as encouraging risk-taking, and where risks and stakes are poorly defined. Expectations, however, are described clearly: risk-taking is associated with a commitment to suffering and anxiety, to bonding and building trust in the face of trauma, and with an end goal of novelty: of designing something no one has ever seen before.

Students’ language indicates that they have learned to value differentiation more than sameness, and to work towards developing a unique style and a unique approach. It is reasonable to assume that, if students did not know to expect an emphasis on innovation when they began their studies, it is through instruction and modeling that they learn to verbally equate innovation to design, and design to risk. Risk, in this case, seems hyperbolic. Students generally do not enter academia prepared to “pull all-nighters” in order to “put themselves out there” where they “may fail in front of everyone.” Making a design decision that is considered conservative likely does not impact the rest of their life, and it’s equally unlikely that everything is riding on how novel a design is, or that everyone is trying new fabrication methods or materials or processes all of the time. These are constructs that have been developed during their education, and it’s likely that instructors contributed to the introduction of this language. The language may be reinforced by action, as a professor may reward these activities and devalue activities that are construed as safe—those taking less time, producing things that are expected, or using materials and methods that are considered appropriate.

The contribution of this paper is in identifying these rhetorical constructions, where design students are using a certain type of language, and examining how this language relates to identity development. Language use indicates that students are learning to present a certain type of designerly identity, one that is emotionally intense, lacks privacy, feels like they are constantly taking risks, values things that are new, and embraces failure. This provokes a question: is this type of identity desirable? It may be that purposefully fostering an educational experience of emotional intensity, one with public exposure, a constant urgency of risk-taking, an endless pursuit of innovation, and a repeated drumbeat of failure may not have the impact that is most appropriate for students as they take on the challenges of modern professional practice.

Notes

All participants in this study attend design classes in the United States, and it is recognized that these findings may have limited applicability in other countries where design is taught and learned. The findings and discussion focus on students who are in their late teens or early twenties. It’s clear that there are many students enrolled in design programs who are older, and it’s unlikely that the findings described here that are tied to generational tendencies generalize to those groups. Further research is necessary to understand how these elements impact design studio teaching and learning.

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