Why Are Designers Not Comfortable in Talking About Their Design Process? Exploration of Students’ Perception of Their Design Experience

Abstract

Professional education programs in environmental design disciplines aim to create ready-to-work designers to introduce in the world of practice. Studio courses are the places where students learn how to perform the professional tasks of design. Education in the studios has a practice-oriented focus, and students usually engage forms of experiential learning, focusing on the performance of final products rather than reflecting on the process. Forms of reflection on the design process do not seem to be part of the tradition of such courses. Students are not taught to do that, so this is also why they find difficult to convey what is in their mind when they are designing. The purpose of this talk is to start a discussion about the type of education instructors offer in design studio courses. In the text, I presents a qualitative research process where I have observed a course class in the Master program of Landscape Architecture at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. Students’ voices captured during the final workshop in this course show how they reflect on their design process and how they perceive their design experience.

Keywords

• design studio
• design process
• design education
• design experience
• reflexivity