Tracing metaphors throughout design education

Abstract

In this exploratory paper, we examine how students perceive metaphors for design research at first and subsequently assign more technical meanings to them throughout the programme. The use of metaphors can be a powerful didactic tool as metaphors can act as gateways, activating students' intuitions and existing knowledge, preparing the mental ground for newly acquired knowledge. However, if educational use of metaphors is studied empirically at all, it is usually at their first introduction and not for a longer period of time. Using a free-association exercise and open response questions in a questionnaire we examined how students' perception of a set of metaphors for design research changed during a 3-year programme. We found that metaphors get loaded with meaning through the aid of connecting concepts, which are important at first, but become less important over longer periods of time. Nevertheless, metaphors that are easily loaded with technical meaning at their first introduction also do better in the long term. As such a fair assessment of the long-term tenacity of the chosen metaphors can be made at the time of introduction.