Abstract
Design education has a responsibility to continuously reconsider its purpose toward students and society. Yet, despite ongoing discussions about what futures for design education should contain, we have little scholarship on how futuring happens in the present. Without addressing the context of sociotechnical institutions, we run the risk of developing design education futures that perpetuate unsustainable ways of knowing, being, and making. This paper aims to enrich conversations about design education futures by accounting for and critically reflecting on the experience of practicing as a design educator-researcher in a large public research university in the United States. Drawing inspiration from art-based and autoethnographic methods, I express three moments from practice as a way to support reflection on the institutional-individual relations at play in our decisions and behaviors as educators. Through this approach, I decenter the design course itself in order to identify how mundane aspects of institutional life (e.g., meetings, classrooms, administrative procedures) mesh with personal experiences (e.g., emotional reactions, professional histories, ethical habits) to shape the design education futures we make in practice. The learnings challenge us to broaden our discussion of futures for design education beyond strategic goals, learning objectives, and curricula to include the messy realities of changing not only institutions, but also ourselves as part of them.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.173
Citation
Whitcomb, A.(2025) Futuring Design Education Better: Practice, Experience, and Context, in Clemente, V., Gomes, G., Reis, M., Félix, S., Ala, S., Jones, D. (eds.), Learn X Design 2025, 22-24 September 2025, Aveiro, Portugal. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.173
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Futuring Design Education Better: Practice, Experience, and Context
Design education has a responsibility to continuously reconsider its purpose toward students and society. Yet, despite ongoing discussions about what futures for design education should contain, we have little scholarship on how futuring happens in the present. Without addressing the context of sociotechnical institutions, we run the risk of developing design education futures that perpetuate unsustainable ways of knowing, being, and making. This paper aims to enrich conversations about design education futures by accounting for and critically reflecting on the experience of practicing as a design educator-researcher in a large public research university in the United States. Drawing inspiration from art-based and autoethnographic methods, I express three moments from practice as a way to support reflection on the institutional-individual relations at play in our decisions and behaviors as educators. Through this approach, I decenter the design course itself in order to identify how mundane aspects of institutional life (e.g., meetings, classrooms, administrative procedures) mesh with personal experiences (e.g., emotional reactions, professional histories, ethical habits) to shape the design education futures we make in practice. The learnings challenge us to broaden our discussion of futures for design education beyond strategic goals, learning objectives, and curricula to include the messy realities of changing not only institutions, but also ourselves as part of them.