Real designers, or entrepreneurial subjects? The discursive construction of creative identity in design education

In this thesis, I will advance a claim that the discourse of design education is internally inconsistent: it simultaneously works to bring a student into a group that sees creativity as a shared, social activity, while constructing a highly self-sufficient designer who understands design, and themselves, as entrepreneurial. This impacts the way design students develop a creative identity.

I will illustrate how the language of design education labels a student as a real designer when they engage in particular behaviors and rituals in studio that are largely shared and social. Many of these are focused on working publicly: sharing their work, continually, and offering and accepting criticism in unique styles and formats. Students learn to see themselves as insiders who are part of an exclusive group of insiders that trust one-another and that views themselves as uniquely prepared to take on creative challenges, together.

I will also show that design education is a place of subjectification, where the pedagogical constructs of studio are presented as purposefully encouraging entrepreneurialism: a successful design student is someone who has the skills to be creatively self-governing, and who, while using those skills to create marketable innovations, takes risks, solves problems methodically, and acts independently. This subjectification comes loaded with beneficial claims—being employable and holding creative power through self-expression—as well as negative qualities, such as anxiety, fear, and feeling a need to hide.

I will illustrate how the language of design education simultaneously imprints both a social construction of a creative insider and an entrepreneurial creative self. Design students describe encountering an entrepreneurial framing at the same time as participating in discourse of communal participation in a cohort of creatives, as well as the free and open exchange of ideas; faculty simultaneously argue that this communal quality is fundamental to being a successful designer, while adamantly prescribing creative individualism as the key to success. Hiring managers are conflicted about which “type” of designer they want to hire, and institutions make promises that students will experience meaningful collaboration, while developing skills suitable to succeed on their own.

Ultimately, I will question if this incongruity is disorienting for students. This thesis encourages instructors to reconsider how they work to develop creative confidence as constructed with entrepreneurial qualities in mind, yet foster the communal support claimed as fundamental to their values of open collaboration: to purposefully resolve, or accept, the inconsistent studio discourse.

Grounding frames and analytical lenses

This research draws on two primary bodies of scholarship to frame my argument, and two lenses for analyzing my data. These are described here in brief, and then in more detail in the chapter outline below.

Grounding frames: Discourse and narrative

Discourse

I ground my writing in the argument that language is constructive, not simply descriptive. Leveraging James Paul Gee’s arguments of the pervasiveness of large, cultural discourses (Gee, 2014), I describe how language-in-use constructs situations. This theory provides the basis for an argument that within the institutional context of higher education, faculty and students actively create, support and change the scaffolds for the social constructs of design education, and do so largely with language; further, external participants in the discourse, such as employers and even the institutions themselves, help establish the space of conversation in design education.

Gee offers several ideas suitable for grounding an argument of a discursive construction of a design subject. First, he explains that language goes beyond communication or the exchange of knowledge; it supports a performance of social activity and identity, as well as claims of participation in a certain type of social group. Additionally, language is social, and situated meanings are created on the spot during conversation. Finally, and acting as one part of a foundation for this thesis, Gee explains that there is a larger “swirling” of ideas around a community and subject, and that language is a way to participate in and shape that swirling of ideas. Students, faculty, and others with membership in the group of design education participate in that larger discourse and simultaneously shape it. Gaining the confidence to speak within that discourse is a part of participating in the context of higher education and design studio.

Narrative

Building on a view that language is constructive at both a local and more broad level, I argue that design students develop a designerly identity in large part through the language of narrative. Bamberg and Bamberg at. al argue that narration allows a speaker to work through three key challenges: navigating between consistency and change of identity, delineating oneself from others, and managing a relationship between oneself and the world. Stories offer a view into this identity creation in action. Conversation is a negotiation, and design education offers a number of unique opportunities for this conversation: in general discussion, in the physically and emotionally pressurized place of studio, in formalized pedagogical structures like critique, and in the common small cohort and community model of studio classes. I will illustrate how identity is always under construction in studio, and language is a primary venue for that construction, and that “small stories” offer an outsider a view into the construction in action.

Analytical lenses: Insiders and entrepreneurial subjects

Becoming an insider

Becker’s theory of labeling indicates that language creates and assigns identity, and language also claims and manipulates relationships between self and professional identity-related perspectives. Groups assign labels to people based on how their actions are perceived in a given social context, and through Becker’s sequential model, the labels become somewhat self-fulfilling. More specifically, Becker argues that when someone violates the social expectations of a norm (purposefully or incidentally), they may become labeled as a rule-breaker: as someone outside of the group’s expectations. This results in their being treated differently, and they begin to form associations with others who have been assigned a similar label. They learn the skills and norms of this outside group, and this shapes their identity and sense of self. Studio education showcases this sequential model in action. Design students find themselves labeled—as designers, but also as entrepreneurial, risk-takers, vulnerable and anxious—and begin to take on the rules characterized by those labels. They form associations with members that extend beyond the educational context—“real designers”—and begin to act designerly; their identity becomes intertwined with the identity of someone who designs. This real designer is an insider, someone who is part of a group and shared their norms, behaviors, processes and language.

Becoming an entrepreneurial subject

A theory of entrepreneurial subjectivity, advanced by Ulrich Bröckling (2016) and others, describe a social manifestation of free-market dynamics: a perspective of an entrepreneurial self that extends beyond the market and into the social lives of subjects, emphasizing specific demeanors of self-sufficiency in how these subjects participate in society. That self is a subject—someone who comes into focus through being subjected to various pressures—and is formed as an enterprising, self-contained creative force.

There are several main qualities of entrepreneurial subjectivity relevant for an exploration into design education. One is the need to continually innovate: to identify opportunity for advancement, and to regularly seize that opportunity by making something people haven’t seen before. Language of innovation repeatedly shows up in student, faculty, employer, and marketing contexts, and scholars have argued that creativity and innovation have largely become synonymous.

Another quality of an entrepreneurial subject is one who disrupts existing perspectives in order to advance a personal agenda, implying also that one has a personal agenda to advance. This is creative authorship which is highly encouraged in studio; students must “have a concept” or “have a message” and work to convey that to an audience, often in a persuasive manner.

Communicating that message and pursuing innovation is presented as risky, and an entrepreneurial subject is expected to embrace risk-taking and, through high-quality work, reap the benefits, implying a clear cause and effect between action and impact; this suggests a need to exhibit a top-down style of control and conquer in the face of problems, and a view that the world is full of problems suitable for solving and situations in need of optimizing. Finally, this subject is expected to continually acquire creative skills in support of the above activities, and to improve and adapt this set of skills as the market context changes.

My research

Principal sources of research

Faculty research—perceptions of students

A large portion of the discourse of design education is produced by instructors who are in positions of authority to control the content and style of conversation in and around the studio environment. In this study, I conducted qualitative interviews with 25 design educators teaching studio-based courses across a range of design disciplines and institutional contexts in the United States.

Faculty in this study describe their expectations for design students: students should be able to solve problems, innovate, take risks, have conviction in their ideas, and speak critically about their work and the work of others. These qualities are both skill-based and psychic, and require a creative confidence that is said by faculty to be constructed during their education. Instructors describe that students fear critique, being seen, and publicly committing to an opinion, and so the work in studio education is not only skill-building: it is largely work to construct a student who is confident engaging in designerly behavior.

Instructors describe that building a place of safety, encouraging vulnerability, and developing a cohort-model are effective ways to instill this creative confidence. They describe a place of studio as a supportive, shared, and largely communal environment. This creates a contradiction; instructors discursively construct a student who is largely self-sufficient, yet simultaneously speak of a studio that is idealized when it is visibly and conceptually open and shared, and where ideas are free.

I will use this research in my thesis to support these claims:

• Instructors describe valuable designerly qualities as risk-taking, problem solving, being innovative, working hard, and actively criticizing their own work and the work of others
• When instructors speak of their students, they construct an individual who is largely self-sufficient: one who can take on challenging problems and work to solve them
• Students are rhetorically created as being scared, anxious, and distrusting; the place of studio is constructed as being safe and secure
• While instructors construct an individual student as someone who is largely entrepreneurial and self-sufficient, they simultaneously speak of studio culture as being communal, open, shared, supportive, and cohort-driven
• Instructors describe students as vulnerable, constructing a design student that requires safety, and likely provoking a sense of confusion and anxiety
• Instructors envision a bifurcated ideal subject—one who can be entirely self-sufficient, yet also actively participants in a collaborative social community

Student research—identity development

Another primary discursive source used in this work is research I conducted with students. 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 of studio—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? In this study, I worked to understand students’ social realities of studio, in order 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?

I gathered data through selfie-style videos with students, and analyzed the discourses they use in presenting their own relationships with studio. 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.

This research indicates that the language used by instructors overlaps largely with the language used by students. When language is argued to be constructive, this research indicates that students are actively constructing a sense of self that mirrors the qualities described by instructors as valuable—being problem solvers, risk takers, innovators, and hard workers. Language of risk-taking is used broadly and often indicates doing something new and different; taking a risk is poorly defined, but considered valuable nonetheless. It also indicates that the adoption of this language and these demeanors is said to be physically and emotionally challenging. Students speak of long hours working and feeling continually anxious, particularly in the need to continually take the poorly defined risks.

I will use this research in my thesis to support claims that:

• Students describe the importance of taking risks, although they have only a vague and broad definition of what a risk is and what process is used to engage in one
• Students and instructors use similar language related to risk-taking, innovation, and problem solving
• Students internalize a culture of hard work and describe value of exhaustive work spent late into the night
• Students struggle to understand and navigate vague or conflicting experiences with instructors

Practitioner research—creativity and hiring

Qualitative research with practitioners introduces language related to the expectations of industry, which weighs heavily on the way instructors and students shape what a design student is, does, and why they study at all. In software organizations, UX designers are hired to ensure digital products are usable, useful, and desirable. Their work spans phases of design typically divided into exploratory and production efforts. The exploratory phase is often framed as creative: it includes qualitative research, problem framing, diagramming, collaborative workshops, and the generation of diverse solutions. This phase values ambiguity, divergent thinking, and structured conflict. In contrast, production design focuses on the detailed work required to ship software.

In this study, I examined this dissonance by researching how design managers—those who hire junior user experience designers in mid-sized and large companies—perceive creativity in practice. I learned that the dissonance is not resolved, and hiring managers describe needing a designer who can follow rules without question, yet simultaneously wanting a designer who breaks rules, looks at situations critically, works independently to solve complex problems, and offers more than just tactical value—someone who is entrepreneurial.

I will use this research in my thesis to support claims that:

• Design is presented as an entrepreneurial activity: hiring managers look for evidence that designers can solve complex problems, work through ambiguity, take risks, and think in ways that others don’t
• The larger conversational discourse of design education impacts and is impacted by job opportunities, and language presented by employers likely plays a large role in the way design students begin to see themselves—employer language shapes what is a “real designer”

Institutional research—value promises

Educational design constructs extend beyond the language used by students and faculty; other members of institutions introduce additional language that contributes to the identity-work done by students and instructors. A primary source for this is in the way academic programs are described publicly, with value promise language likely developed by marketing, administrators, recruiters, and faculty.

This research study methodically examined those value promises from design schools across 393 undergraduate bachelor’s degree programs in the United States, in order to understand how design schools describe their educational programs to prospective students: how they have chosen to write about and advertise their programs, with a particular focus on themes that have been emphasized and prioritized. These themes can be interpreted as representing industry trends or as aspirational differentiators in a competitive market; they may also be indicative of the expectations that students have when they enter academia—for example, if they choose a school in part because the website describes innovation, they will likely expect to experience something related to innovation in their education.

This study identified that program messaging presented a homogeneous picture of value, with claims centered on practical skill development, topic-specific knowledge, and employability. Nearly all programs promised students that they would learn one or more of only fourteen specific design topics. Over half explicitly promised employment or career readiness after graduation. Although graphic, industrial, and interaction design programs differed in the particular topics they emphasized, all three disciplines shared a common emphasis on skills and career preparation. Industrial design programs explicitly emphasized innovation, strategy, problem solving, making, and the relationship between design and society. Approximately 20% of programs explicitly referenced entrepreneurship.

I will use this research in my thesis to support claims that:

• Academic programs explicitly promise that students will become entrepreneurial, create innovations, solve problems, develop authorship, and form a new sense of self
• The larger conversation of design education introduces entrepreneurial language at the beginning of the educational experience, in one of what is likely the first places a student encounters language of design

Supporting sources of research

Theorizing—creativity and novelty

In presenting an argument of entrepreneurial-subjectivity of design education, I draw from my existing scholarship that describes the relationship between creativity and innovation. This work argues that creativity has been continually equated to innovation, and disruption, lateral thinking and novelty have become common language used by practitioners, academics, and instructors themselves. Creativity has been studied in the discipline of psychology, which has tended to define creativity singularly through the narrow lens of novelty—that creativity is only concerned with newness, and creativity can (and should) be measured by the quantity of new ideas that are developed. This lens is overly reductive, as it ignores the rigorous process, thinking, and reflection of creativity in design as practiced, and isolates creativity as a discrete activity while ignoring the much larger context in which it occurs.

I argue that, in professional and educational practice, this narrow perspective of creativity as novelty is “winning,” even in the discipline of design. Exercises related to lateral thinking are common in design practice, and disruptive innovation through the offering of something novel has become a nearly ubiquitous goal for product and service design in companies. As educational institutions become more vocationally focused, design school coursework increasingly emphasizes the relationship between design and business innovation, which shows up largely as equating creative acts of design to making things no one has seen before.

This paper highlights the dominant perspective that has shaped contemporary understandings of creativity in psychology and has found its way into the discipline of design. It traces how psychological definitions of creativity as measurable novelty were selectively adopted into design discourse and pedagogy, and shows how this framing continues to shape educational priorities and professional practice. By surfacing this history and proposing alternative, situated frames, the paper offers design educators an opportunity to examine the extent to which creativity as novelty has entered their own educational studios, to consider the consequences of that prevalence, and to re-evaluate the learning experiences they structure for their students.

I will use this research in my thesis to support claims that:

• Design has become synonymous with innovation, and—in agreement with Bröckling—the pursuit of innovation is emblematic of an entrepreneurial self who views the world as something to be manipulated and improved
• Creativity is actively positioned in ways that also contradict Bröckling’s argument of an entrepreneurial self, as when creativity is conducted with no intent of competitive gain, or when it is pursued absent of risk-taking; this indicates that creativity without novelty may conflict with an argument of a subject of entrepreneurism.

Theorizing—chronopolitics

Chronopolitics represents a set of working expectations that emerges in studio culture, expectations of hard toil, time spent working, and a disdain for laziness. This indicates studio as a place of entrepreneurialism, where hard work is an indoctrinated value. Embedded within this model is a complicated relationship with time. Studio education is structured around long class periods. The projects are ambiguous and have vague timelines. Unlike educational environments where learning is organized around specific lessons and managed blocks of time, studio work often expands and contracts according to the needs of the project. Creative work requires exploration, reflection, experimentation, revision, and uncertainty, making the time required difficult to predict.

These time-based expectations are social. When students spend time working, they signal to their instructors that they are engaged and developing designerly expertise. Studio spaces are intentionally designed to encourage presence, with dedicated desks, shared amenities, and social environments that support extended work.

Chronopolitics provides a way of examining this tension by exploring how time, labor, power, and social expectations are intertwined in the studio. Chronopolitics argues the distinction between clock time—time as a unit of measure that is extrinsic to any given task—and task time, specific to a given interaction or activities. My theoretical argument explores the role of time in design studio education through an analysis of instructor and student discourse, as seen through a lens of chronopolitics. Drawing on the above research with both faculty and students, this paper examines how both groups describe time, effort, presence, and work in studio environments. By considering these descriptions from a chronopolitical standpoint, this paper questions one of the most enduring assumptions of design education: that spending more time in studio leads to becoming a better designer.

I will use this research in my thesis to support claims that:

• Design studio discourse heavily rests on discussions of long period of hard work and extensive effort; these are all qualities Bröckling attributes to entrepreneurial subjects
• An entrepreneurial view of creativity sees it as an endless pursuit, one that has no true destination—one must continually work and improve in order to stay relevant and competitive
• Students and faculty understand work-ethic differential, with students referencing a clock-time approach to design as a constant pursue of productivity, and faculty encouraging a task-time view of creativity as a form of open-ended exploration

Historic Analysis—User Experience Bootcamps

The final source of original work that I draw from is theory development related to the rise and fall of a unique type of educational model, the user experience bootcamp. This research showed the way design education worked through a period of scaling in which core messaging around designer purpose overtly changed.

User experience design has been primarily taught through bootcamps—short-form immersive programs intended to fast-track students toward careers. While a traditional design or computer-science program may take students four years to complete, a bootcamp can be as short as a few weeks. A typical college program includes a mix of theory, exploration, and application, but bootcamps often sacrifice breadth of curriculum for an explicit focus on marketable skills. In industry, UX bootcamps have become largely considered ineffective, due to this compressed length, lack of depth and lack of scaffolded learning, and a focus on methods, rather than meaningful reflective practice.

The rise and decline of UX bootcamps is a failure in one specific type of education, but it reveals the limits of scaling practice-based technology and design education under market pressure. In this text, I argue that bootcamps are a poor model for preparing design students for professional practice, as design requires pedagogical fundamentals that push back on scale. When bootcamps worked to disrupt design education, they ignored core studio pedagogy. I show how, in moving classes online and forcing them into a much shorter timeframe, the disruptors removed the core conditions for how design is taught and learned, and the quality of design graduates degraded.

I will use this research in my thesis to support claims that:

• Bootcamps are an example of an educational model that has an explicit goal of constructing an entrepreneurial subject—they are largely the embodiment of “valley-style entrepreneurship” in action
• Bootcamps failed because they ignored core studio pedagogy that was often communal or collaborative in nature

Chapter Outline

This outline indicates how I will build an argument of a) studio discourse as an example of entrepreneurial subjectification being constructed, and b) challenges to the theory of the entrepreneurial subject in the face of community-oriented discourses in the design studio.

Introduction

In this chapter, I briefly introduce design education, then present an abbreviated version of the argument that will follow throughout the remainder of the document, and walk through each chapter in brief.

Chapter 1: An introduction to design and design education, and my research question

In this chapter, I offer background into both design and design studio education. The goal of this chapter is to establish a context of design education in which a reader can imagine the subsequent argument taking place.

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Chapter 2: Discourse creates creative identity

In this chapter, I will show how discourse works to create a sense of identity and self.

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Chapter 3: Research method to understand the discourse of design education

In this chapter, I will introduce the four research studies that I will draw from in subsequent chapters. These include faculty interviews related to the perceptions of students in studio, student video selfies related to identity development in studio, practitioner interviews related to creativity and hiring, and the analysis of value promises from institutions. Each of these studies examines the discourse of design education, with a unique area of focus. The intent of this chapter is to illustrate methodology, so that each of these studies can then be described and engaged with in subsequent chapters easily.

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Chapter 4: The discourse of design education constructs a designer as someone who…

In this chapter, I draw primarily from my own research to show that design education has a particular discourse related to specific focus areas. The language used by instructors, students, the organizational infrastructure of academia, and hiring managers all center around acquiring skills for solving problems, working hard and continuously for long periods of time, continually displaying creative artifacts and being emotionally vulnerable to criticism, and engaging in a social, vibrant community. I supplement this with existing scholarly research into the dynamics of design studio culture that supports the presence of these ideas in ongoing language if studio.

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Chapter 5: Students are labeled as insiders; they are part of an exclusive group

In this chapter, I will draw from Becker’s labeling theory—that there is a sequential model of entry into a group that may be considered materially different from most other groups. My research offers support for the generally accepted view that studio is a social place, one that is mutually and continually constructed through language. Design education emphasizes social interactions, trust, collaboration, and well-intentioned criticism. Through design education, students become “real designers” - they become insider members of an exclusive group.

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Chapter 6: Students are constructed as entrepreneurial subjects

In this chapter, I show that while labeling is assigning students into a group of “real designers”, another force is at play in studio: the construction of entrepreneurial self.

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Chapter 7: Design education is internally inconsistent in its identity construction.

In this chapter, I will make clear the inconsistency between design identity as constructed through labeling and design identity as imprinted through subjectification. I will put the theories of labeling theory and the entrepreneurial self in conversation with one-another, leveraging my research data as well as scholarly research related to design. My intent is not to paint the aspects of design education discourse as oppositional, but instead to show that they frequently challenge one-another, and the challenge is unresolved. Each of these unresolved challenges is described below.

Pursuing private innovations while understanding ideas as shared and social

In design education, a student confronts the questions: do I own my ideas? Are ideas free?

An entrepreneurial subject views design is a series of problems to solve, and that the way to solve them is by working independently. Good solutions are rare, and so they should be protected and hidden. A student feels that they are in competition with one-another, and that a way to protect an idea is to be isolated (using headphones, avoiding physical and spiritual presence in studio).

An insider sees themselves as someone who shares their ideas with others in the group. They learn to put their ideas on the walls around them so others can freely engage with the concepts. Their work becomes a social tool: the display of design artifacts indicates that they feel comfortable treating ideas as a free exchange, and designing itself becomes a way to show insider participation.

Design problems can be addressed in individually or in groups, and many academic programs indicate that they combine both types of activities in the classroom. Similarly, ideas can be considered owned or free. At issue is the nature of the shared social artifact, and the ownership of the artifact and the idea embedded in it.

As a result of this conflict, creative confidence becomes confused: a student does not know what, if anything, they have earned the social rights to find pride in.

Developing individualized skills of authorship and value generation, but treating the output as disposable and transient

In design education, a student confronts the questions: is my value in what I make? Is my value in how I think?

An entrepreneurial subject understands design as about something that is finished and unassailable. Their role is a producer, and they must have a message or style or idea to communicate. What they end with is the important part of design, because that is what will sustain the entrepreneurial drive. A student learns that their worth is in something finished.

An insider understands design as a process of continually making things that are temporary and ephemeral. Artifacts themselves are fleeting; worth is in the making, not the output, because designing is a way of working and a way of being. Being creative is a way of experiencing the world, and craft and quality of exploration becomes more important than finality.

Design can be about an artifact or a process. A student must ask themselves if a designer is someone who is a craftsman or a visionary, and if they have something to show or something to say.

Engaging in social rituals of ongoing improvement, yet receiving conclusive assessment

In design education, a student confronts the question: am I right or wrong?

An entrepreneurial subject sees problems as having right and wrong answers that can be judged. Creativity succeeds or fails, and success and failure are due to one’s skills and abilities. Assessment is external and conclusive.

An insider sees design as neither right or wrong, but as better or worse. An understanding of quality emerges through a collaborative process of critique, and assessment of quality is never fixed because a design artifact is never done. No single entity can pass judgment on the success or failure of a design. This assessment emerges through ongoing discussion.

Throughout design education, students come to view their work as under constant negotiation, or as complete and ready for judgment. They understand themselves as someone who makes things that are better or worse, or as someone who must be right or wrong.

Being surrounded by a frenetic energy of momentum, while being urged to slow down and reflect

In design education, a student confronts the questions: should I be productive? Should I be reflective?

An entrepreneurial subject understands that, as success and failure is assessed through something that is produced, chances of success can be improved by working faster and being more productive. Making things should be fast and efficient. Quantity is more important than quality.

An insider understands the process of design to be slow, reflective, and methodical. At points in the process, an artifact should have a high degree of refinement which comes over time and attention to detail. Broad exploration is valuable; “unproductive” time is necessary in order to work through complex, ambiguous situations.

There is a distinction between design as a reflective practice, and design as a form of productivity. As part of a practice, work is a means to an end of creative understanding. As a form of production, work is an end in itself. Throughout design education, students must understand if they are tools for production. They must simultaneously explore if they are interpretative actors of reflection.

Engaging with a team, but pursuing a vocational career path

In design education, a student confronts the questions: am I supported? Am I on my own?

An entrepreneurial subject sees designing as an individual endeavor. They are responsible for putting “pen to paper”, and their abilities are what determine success. Their contribution is clear.

An insider understands designers as people who work together towards a shared goal. They see value in being surrounded by other designers, and a strong designer is someone who contributes to a larger conversation of a design problem. They can depend on others for creative support; criticism is something that should be supportive and generative.

In design education, creativity is said to emerge from a group of creative people being around one-another, but a single designer is ultimately responsible for making a designerly move. Additionally, a vocational focus of design education underscores that a single student should pursue a single job. To resolve this conflict, a student needs to understand what role they take within a cohort, and how to engage socially while simultaneously developing as an individual designer.

Learning to conform, and learning to challenge

In design education, a student confronts the questions: where do I fit in a culture of style and innovation?

An entrepreneurial subject understands success to be based on differentiation and doing things that haven’t been done before. Doing things differently and embracing novelty comes with a risk of failure, and that risk is something to be embraced and encouraged. New methods, approaches, styles, and philosophies are a path towards creative success.

An insider knows that designers should embrace different aesthetic, methodological and process trends and ways of working that have already been established through the history of the profession. Design is about following the rules of an architected system; rules can be broken, but only selectively and carefully.

Design is about making sense of the world around us, but designs should be unexpected and strange. A real designer is selectively different. An entrepreneur is always different. A new student does not yet know if they are someone who conforms to existing styles, approaches and designerly ways of working; they similarly do now know if they are someone who is groundbreaking, risk-taking, and expansive.

Chapter 8: Who cares, and what do we do about it?

In this final chapter, I will address the important question of relevance and impact. This work has implications directly on design pedagogy and educational methodology, and calls into question the basic premise of design education by considering what it means to become a designer.

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Conclusion

In this conclusion, I will summarize my thesis, concisely (re)arguing that design studio discourse is inconsistent and works to simultaneously construct an insider who is part of a group of “real designers,” and an entrepreneurial self who is a lone creative force; I will reiterate that this produces a confused student. Design is said to flourish through a pursuit of self-interest, but is also said to be highly contingent on the qualities of group participation and collaboration. The discourse is unresolved, and design students are caught in the middle.

This presents a fractured educational experience, calling into question the fundamental distinction between individualized skill and ability to be entirely self-advancing, and a sense of collaborative creativity and participation in an exclusive group. I will reiterate my argument: the space is in self-conflict because, through studio language, students begin to understand themselves to be part of that creative group, yet also as an isolated, self-sufficient creative force.

Contributions

This dissertation will offer several scholarly contributions.

First, this work will present design education as a place where language plays a critical role: language is used to construct the idea of a designer. Through the conversation of design (including language presented by faculty, by other students, by the larger institution of academia, and by industry), students become designers. This challenges views of design education as a talent-based endeavor that is exclusively aimed at fostering skill development; it shows that becoming a designer extends beyond learning to design.

Next, this paper contributes a unique view of a design student in tension between two particular discursive forces: they are constructed as part of a group of “real designers” while simultaneously shaped as an entrepreneurial self. This view demands attention from faculty, institutions, and those with the power to shape curricula and institutional discourse, as the conflicted construction of self likely results in a confused student.