It’s a courageous contribution to live authentically and be confident in our own journey.

It’s all too easy to look at others and try to replicate their success. Social media, in particular, shows the best snapshots of our friends and colleagues. The most courageous contribution we can make is to live authentically and be confident in our own journey.

Throughout our workshops with students and years of teaching, we have observed that accomplished students know why they are studying design and what challenges they want to work on in their careers. These young designers seem to have a sense of direction that helps them learn in a focused way and utilize new knowledge and skills toward their greater design purpose. While these students are not always the most technically exceptional, they do appear driven and highly engaged in the classroom.

During his PhD, design education researcher Ehsan Baha developed design identity work sessions to help students identify their own principles for good design. Baha asked students to develop an annotated portfolio of projects they liked. The students annotated their portfolio with why they thought the projects were examples of good design. Then, students rapidly met each other (in a sort of speed dating style) to exchange their annotated project portfolios. Students would draft and redraft five principles of good design based on peer feedback and intense discussion. In the end, the students would have five personal yet powerful principles of good design, for example: good design is timeless or good design is just. Baha found this to be a highly effective way to help students develop their own sense of designer identity. This process can be done in student speed sessions or through longer coach/teacher to student dialogues. With the five principles of good design, an individual student can then consciously design future projects and courses based on their own identity and purpose. And of course, these principles might evolve over time.