Designer Identity: Reflection with Verbal and Visual Representation Systems

 

ABSTRACT While the increasing product diversity, developing presentation, production and communication opportunities bring forward individualism in design, forming a unique and consistent view needs thinking about individual identity and clarifying designer definitions. In contrast to its contemporary importance, the subject of identity is not given a sufficient place in design education programs and literature. Realized with the undergraduate students of interior architecture, this study required identity definitions that reflected them through verbal and visual representations and asked them to design furniture based on these. At the end of the study, a questionnaire related to representation methods and design processes was held, followed by the analyses of effects of related usage of different modalities and presentation of the outcomes. The results show that students usually prefer visual techniques while reflecting themselves. In addition, verbal representations which significantly contribute to design processes can widely be used under guidance. Besides, studying with different representation systems help students think conceptually and ask new questions. Aimed at researchers studying on education and students, the goal of this study is to discover the positive role of coordinated use of different modalities on thought-development processes and present a developmentable method in reflecting designer identity.