PSV

What the ARP has changed for me

When I started this Action Research Project, my focus was mainly on students: how they imagine users, how they talk about social and affordable housing, and whether a sequence of early studio activities could help them move beyond narrow or privileged assumptions. What I did not fully anticipate was how much the process would also reshape the way I understand my own teaching practice, particularly in relation to ethics.

One of the clearest moments of this shift came when reflecting on an exercise I have used for several years: asking students to draw their own homes at the start of the studio. Pedagogically, this exercise worked very well. It helped students understand domestic scale, spatial organisation, and construction precisely because the object of study was so close to them. Over time, however, I also noticed something else happening alongside this learning. Differences in living conditions became immediately visible, often before a sense of trust or shared language had been established in the group. Inequality appeared quickly, but framed through individual circumstances rather than as a structural condition.

Looking back, I do not see this earlier exercise as unethical. It was a common and accepted pedagogical practice, and it generated valuable learning. What this ARP has helped me recognise, however, is that pedagogical effectiveness and ethical implications are not the same thing, and that the latter often only become visible through repetition and reflection. The issue was not what students were asked to do, but when and how that task was positioned within the studio sequence.

This insight shaped the first intervention in a very direct way. By reframing the question as “What is the meaning of home for you?” and allowing students to respond through abstract, fictional, or indirect means, I was not avoiding discussions of inequality, but sequencing them more carefully. This created space for reflection before comparison, and for shared language before exposure. Students still engaged with difference and inequality, but through themes such as care, routine, safety, and belonging, rather than through immediate spatial comparison.

The second intervention made these issues more explicit. The speculative user workshop showed very clearly how confident students can be in their first assumptions, even after completing research, and how those assumptions are shaped by normative, disciplinary, representational, and temporal biases. Importantly, the shift did not come from correction, but from collective discussion. When questions around income, tenure, eligibility, and precarity were introduced publicly and revisited, students were able to recognise the limits of their initial user profiles themselves. Discomfort played a role here, but it was productive rather than punitive, and it helped reframe speculative users as something to be worked on, not defended.

Across the project, what has emerged most strongly for me is an understanding of ethics not as a checklist or constraint, but as something embedded in pedagogical design. Ethics, in this context, is about framing, pacing, and care: about how learning environments are structured, what is made visible, and when. It is also about recognising that bias is not a student failure, but a starting condition, something that needs to be surfaced, named, and worked through rather than denied.

This ARP represents one cycle of that process. It has allowed me to articulate things I had previously been doing intuitively, and to see more clearly how relatively small changes in sequencing can have a significant impact on student experience and learning. Importantly, it has not “closed” the enquiry. The reflections generated here are already informing a revised studio plan for next year, which will form the basis of the next iteration of this action research spiral.

Rather than providing definitive answers, this project has strengthened my confidence in approaching socially sensitive briefs with greater intentionality and care. It has also reinforced my belief that ethics in architectural education is not primarily about proximity to “real” users, but about how we prepare students to imagine, represent, and ultimately design for others responsibly.

I have to admit I would have loved to have more time to compare in a more rigorous way the work of the different cohorts during these years and the different patterns of Stage 2 and Stage 3 students. These questions remain open and they are what will shape the next cycle of this work.

When students are asked to imagine users, they never start from a neutral place. This isn’t a criticism of students, it’s simply recognising that we all bring assumptions with us, often without realising it, and usually with good intentions.

Rather than seeing bias as something to eliminate, this project has helped me think of it as a starting point in speculative design work. The real pedagogical question isn’t whether bias exists, but whether students are given the space and support to notice it, question it, and work through it.

After observing several cohorts and reflecting on the speculative user workshop, I started to notice some recurring patterns in how students imagine users. The four types of bias described below aren’t taken from a single theory or framework, they’re ways of naming things I’ve seen happen repeatedly in the studio, informed by reading but grounded in teaching practice.

Normative bias: Students often default to what feels “normal”: stable jobs, predictable income, good health, independence, and conventional household setups. Even when working on social or affordable housing, users are often imagined as aspirational versions of the self rather than as real people living with constraint. Certain ways of living simply feel more familiar or easier to imagine than others (Ahmed, 2006).

Disciplinary bias: Architecture education tends to value clarity, coherence, and control. As a result, students often create users who fit neatly into design narratives: consistent routines, stable needs, and legible lifestyles. Messiness, instability, and contradiction,  which are very present in real housing situations, are harder to draw or explain, and often get left out.

Temporal bias: Speculative users are often imagined as fixed and unchanging. Things like job loss, illness, caring responsibilities, or shifts in household structure rarely appear unless students are explicitly prompted. As a result, users can feel frozen in time, disconnected from the uncertainty and change that shape many people’s housing experiences.

Representational bias!! (this can be a whole new ARP. I need to expand on this)

Conclusions

What’s been most important for me through this ARP is recognising that these biases aren’t individual failings. They’re shaped by students’ own experiences, by disciplinary habits, and by the tools architecture education gives them. The role of the studio, then, isn’t to correct students, but to create situations where assumptions can surface and be talked about.

The speculative user workshop didn’t remove bias and that wasn’t the aim. What it did do was create a shared moment where students could see their thinking shift, especially when questions around income, tenure, and eligibility were discussed openly. Bias became something to work with, rather than something to defend against.

Thinking about bias in this way has reinforced for me that ethical architectural education isn’t about telling students what to think. It’s about being careful with when questions are introduced, how they’re framed, and who is involved in the conversation. Bias doesn’t disappear through instruction alone, but it can be gently unsettled through reflective, collective studio practice.

I created the following guidelines for me and my teaching partner:

“Who do I imagine when I imagine a user?”

Date: 21.11.25

Duration: 1.5–2 hours
Format: Studio-based session
Participants: 15 Students (Stage 2 and Stage 3 BA Architecture)
Context: Design Studio: Social / affordable housing retrofit

Materials

• Students’ portfolio page with three speculative user profiles
• Visual representations of users prepared in advance (fictional images, drawings, collages)
• A3 paper (spare)
• Pens / markers
• Post-its
• Screen

1. Welcome and framing (5–10 minutes)

Purpose:
To establish a shared ethical framework and set expectations for the session.

Key points to communicate verbally:

• “Today we are going to pause design work and focus on how we imagine people different from ourselves.”
• “This session is not about assessing your work or correcting it.”
• “Because we are working with social and affordable housing, how we imagine users carries ethical weight.”
• “You are not required to disclose anything personal. Fictionalisation, abstraction, and distance are welcome.”

Tone to establish:

• Exploratory rather than critical
• Reflective rather than corrective
• Collective learning rather than individual judgement

2. Individual warm-up: rereading speculative users (5 minutes)

Ask students to quietly reread the three speculative user profiles they have prepared, alongside the visual material they brought to represent them.

Invite them to annotate:

• What feels grounded or well-researched?
• Where might this profile need more nuance?
• Where am I assuming, simplifying, or generalising?

3. Small-group sharing (15–20 minutes)

Students work in groups of three or four.

Each student briefly introduces their three users and accompanying visual material
(approximately 2 minutes per set).

Encourage them to focus on:

• Who the person or household is (composition, work conditions, care roles)
• What everyday spatial practices are implied
• What constraints or challenges shape daily life
• How the visual representation supports (or simplifies) the narrative

Guidance for group discussion:

• Ask clarifying questions, not evaluative ones.
• Focus on understanding the user, not judging accuracy.
• Consider whether identity categories meaningfully shape lived experience or function as surface labels.

Tutors circulate and observe without intervening.

4. Group reflection activity (15 minutes)

Distribute Post-its.

Ask students to respond individually to:

“What surprised you, or challenged your assumptions, in someone else’s users?”

Students write 2–3 short notes and place them on a shared surface.

As they do so, tutors observe recurring themes.

Once all Post-its are placed:

• Group similar comments together
• Summarise aloud, for example:
  • “Several of you noticed assumptions around income or work patterns.”
  • “There are recurring questions about care, accessibility, or household structure.”

5. Whole-class guided discussion (10 minutes)

Facilitate a reflective conversation using prompts such as:

• Which aspects of identity appeared most frequently?
• Which were largely absent?
• How did you decide which details were ethically relevant to include?
• How do these identities and conditions shape spatial practices?
• Where might stereotypes be creeping in, even unintentionally?
• Which constraints (for example income, tenure, eligibility, or precarity) are clearly defined, and which remain vague?

The initial question — “Do you think your users are appropriate for social or affordable housing?” — is revisited at the end of the discussion to allow students to reflect on whether their position has shifted.

6. Reframing the visual representation of users (15 minutes)

Students are asked to critically reflect on the visual material they brought.

Prompt them to consider:

• What does this image communicate about the user’s agency?
• Does it reinforce a particular narrative (heroic, tragic, aspirational)?
• What aspects of everyday life are missing?
• How might this image need to evolve as the design develops?

This positions images as active design tools, not neutral illustrations.

7. Short individual written reflection (10 minutes)

Ask students to write 3–5 sentences responding to:

“How did you decide whose story was important to tell, and how you chose to represent it?”

Remind them:

• Not to include personal or sensitive information
• To keep users anonymised
• To focus on decision-making rather than personal disclosure

Collect these reflections at the end of the session.

8. Closing discussion (5 minutes)

Close with:

• “What did you learn today about imagining others?”
• “How might this change how you approach your design project?”

Thank students for engaging thoughtfully with a complex task.

Facilitation notes

Tone

• Supportive, curious, reflective
• Emphasise refinement rather than correction

Common challenges

• Defaulting to middle-class, able-bodied norms
• Hesitation around race, gender, or disability
• Overly simplified or stereotypical imagery

Strategies

• Encourage specificity without sensationalism
• Emphasise research over imagination alone
• Model careful language
• Reinforce that identity should shape spatial need and practice, not just appear visually

Second Intervention: Speculative users, discomfort, and collective recalibration

The second intervention took place once students had completed an initial phase of site, building, and demographic research and were asked, as we do every year, to create three speculative users for their design proposals. The studio brief is to work on the retrofit of the Dorset Estate, with the aim of improving living conditions and wellbeing while also increasing density and the number of dwellings.

Despite this research phase, the first iteration of speculative users followed a familiar pattern. Characters were generally well intentioned, but often unrealistic. Many students focused on lifestyle descriptions while overlooking fundamental constraints such as income, tenure, or eligibility for social and affordable housing. At this stage, students were largely confident that their users were appropriate.

This moment of confidence was precisely what the second intervention set out to work with.

Designing the intervention (more info on this post)

Rather than correcting the speculative users directly, I wanted to create a situation in which students would begin to question their own assumptions collectively. The intervention was therefore structured as a staged in-studio workshop rather than a tutor-led critique.

Students were first asked to work in pairs and introduce their speculative users to one another. My teaching partner and I moved around the room listening to the conversations, but deliberately did not intervene. The aim was to observe how students described their users, what they prioritised, and which questions emerged organically through peer discussion.

Following this, students pinned up their work and presented their users to the whole group. I then facilitated a collective discussion using a set of pre-planned questions, while my teaching partner took notes. Students were informed that this activity formed part of my Action Research Project and agreed to take part.

Introducing constraint through questioning

The discussion began with a simple question: do you think you have accurately portrayed the type of user who would reasonably live in social or affordable housing? At this stage, all students responded confidently and affirmatively.

The conversation then shifted to household income and working patterns. Many students had not explicitly considered this, so we asked them to estimate income levels during the session. While some figures remained unrealistic, they were noticeably closer to real conditions than those produced by previous cohorts. Importantly, the act of having to articulate income publicly introduced a moment of productive discomfort that prompted further questioning.

As the discussion continued, issues of tenure, household composition, and longer-term precarity began to surface.

At the end of the session, the initial question was revisited. This time, students collectively acknowledged that their first approach had been limited. They recognised that they had underestimated the constraints faced by the users they were designing for and articulated a clearer awareness of how these constraints should shape their design thinking.

First Intervention – “What Is the Meaning of Home for You?”

This first intervention sits at the very beginning of the studio and responds to a question I have been asking students for several years: What does home mean to you? Until last year, the way we approached this question was by asking students to draw their own homes. Over time, this exercise proved extremely effective in helping students understand domestic scale, spatial organisation, and how things are built. Because the object of study was so close to them, students developed a strong awareness of measure and materiality almost instinctively.

After running the same brief for several years, however, I also became more aware of the broader implications of this exercise. When students drew their own homes, social and economic inequalities became immediately visible. Some students presented generous one-bedroom flats in areas such as King’s Cross or Battersea, often lived in alone, while others revealed overcrowded family homes with limited privacy and shared spaces. Although these drawings were powerful, they also exposed personal circumstances in ways that were not always easy to hold within the studio, particularly at the very start of the course.

As part of this Action Research Project, and informed by ethical guidance on emotionally demanding research — which highlights the need to minimise unintended exposure and distress in educational settings (BERA, 2024) — I decided to reframe this initial exercise. Rather than asking students to draw their homes, I invited them to respond to the question “What is the meaning of home for you?” in an open format of their choosing. This marked the first intervention of the ARP.

Different ways to reflect

Shifting the format, not the intention

The intention of the exercise remained the same: to encourage reflection on domesticity, everyday life, and lived experience. What changed was the mode of response. Students were free to choose how they wanted to express their understanding of home, without being required to produce a spatial drawing of their own living conditions.

The outcomes were deliberately diverse. Some students worked with collage, layering images and text to express ideas of belonging, memory, or displacement. Others used photography to capture everyday moments or objects associated with domestic routines. One student responded through a short video clip by an artist, using it as a way to articulate emotional and spatial aspects of home that would have been difficult to draw.

These responses were reflective, but in a way that felt less exposing than drawing plans of personal homes. Inequality did not disappear, but it was no longer immediately legible through square metres, room sizes, or location. Instead, discussions emerged around care, comfort, routine, safety, and relationships — themes that could later be connected more explicitly to housing, users, and wellbeing within the studio sequence.

Workshop 2 has been an important for me to clarify how my teaching practice already aligns with established Action Research approaches.

Working through these questions helped me articulate that my ARP does not rely on a single research tool, but on a combination of qualitative methods embedded within studio teaching. Rather than introducing new instruments such as interviews or questionnaires, I draw on methods that are already part of architectural education and that are appropriate to the ethical sensitivity of working with housing and domestic life.

In line with Action Research models that accept iteration and “mess” as part of rigour (Cook, 2009), these methods are deliberately flexible and responsive.

Studio artefacts as qualitative data

One of the primary methods in this ARP is the analysis of studio-generated artefacts. These include drawings, collages, poems, models, speculative user profiles, and final visualisations that place users within designed spaces.

As discussed in the workshop, document and artefact analysis is a recognised qualitative method, particularly within practice-based and art-and-design research. In this project, these artefacts function as traces of how students understand home, care, wellbeing, and socio-economic constraint at different moments in the studio sequence (Schön, 1983; Koshy, 2010).

Importantly, the focus is on patterns across the work rather than on individual students. This allows me to analyse learning processes without treating students themselves as research subjects.

Observation, field notes, and action learning

A second method is tutor observation, supported by field notes taken during studio activities. This includes tutorials, peer discussions, and whole-group pin-ups. These moments often reveal shifts in understanding more clearly than formal feedback or written reflection alone.

The speculative user workshop, in particular, functioned as a form of action learning set, where students presented challenges to one another, questioned assumptions collectively, and revised their thinking in response. My role in these moments was not to provide answers, but to structure the conditions for reflection and dialogue.

Notes taken during these sessions supported later reflection on how students’ assumptions shifted when issues such as income, tenure, and eligibility were made explicit.

Reflective practitioner enquiry

Finally, the ARP relies on reflective practitioner enquiry, through which I critically examine my own teaching decisions over time. Having taught this studio for six years, I was able to compare this cohort’s responses with those of previous years and reflect on how relatively small changes in sequencing produced different outcomes.

This aligns closely with the Action Research Spiral: observation leads to reflection, which informs planning, action, and revision. I understand my current ARP as one part of the cycle of this process, with the revised studio plan for next year forming the starting point for the next cycle.

1.  What is the working title of your project?

Working title:  To what extent does a teaching sequence support socio-spatial and ethical awareness in architecture students?

This Action Research Project examines how a structured sequence of teaching activities supports BA Architecture students in developing socio-spatial and ethical awareness before beginning design proposals for affordable and social housing on the Dorset Estate. The project builds on my experience of teaching the same studio brief over several years and responds to recurring challenges in how students imagine and represent future users.

The pedagogical sequence moves from personal reflection ‘What is the meaning of home for you?’ through speculative exploration to a collective workshop entitled ‘Who do I imagine when I imagine a user?’. In this workshop, students prepare three speculative user profiles informed by demographic research rather than direct engagement with residents.The project investigates how this sequencing helps students recognize the ethical responsibilities involved in architectural representation, particularly when working with socially sensitive housing contexts. 

2. What sources will you read or reference? 

BERA (2024) Guidelines for Educational Research (5th ed.).

UAL Code of Practice on Educational Ethics and Educational Ethics (Canvas).

International Visual Sociology Association (IVSA), Code of Research Ethics and Guidelines. University of Sheffield (2018) Emotionally Demanding Research.

Banks, S. (2016) Everyday Ethics in Professional Life.

IVSA (2009) Ethics and Guidelines. Social Research Association (SRA) (2021) Research Ethics Guidance.

Cook, T. (2009) ‘The purpose of mess in action research: building rigour through a messy turn’, Educational Action Research

3. What action(s) are you planning to take and are they realistic in the time you have (Sept-Dec)?

 I am redesigning and testing a short pre-design pedagogical sequence within existing studio teaching time. The actions focus on supporting students’ critical reflection on domesticity and the ethical implications of representing others, prior to any design work.

The sequence includes:

• What is the meaning of home for you?
  An open-ended reflective exercise responding to the concept of home through a chosen medium (e.g. collage, photograph, text, sound, object). Students are not required to depict their own home or disclose personal circumstances. This activity supports reflection while avoiding unequal exposure of domestic conditions.
• Speculative exploration of home and care
  A follow-on task that invites students to move beyond personal experience and explore ideas of collectivity, care, and everyday spatial practices. This stage prepares students to think relationally and socially before introducing users.
• Who do I imagine when I imagine a user?
  The central intervention is a structured workshop in which students present a portfolio page containing three speculative user profiles. These profiles are informed by demographic research (e.g. household types, income ranges, work patterns, accessibility needs, housing precarity) rather than direct engagement with residents. Users are represented through fictional images, drawings, or short vignettes prepared in advance. During the workshop, peer discussion and facilitated questioning encourage students to critically reassess assumptions around income, tenure, eligibility, and everyday life.

Following the workshop, students write a short anonymized reflection on how they decided whose stories to foreground and how they chose to represent them. I will collect these written reflections and examples of studio-generated work for analysis. This is realistic within the available timeframe and existing assessment structure. The focus of analysis will be on students’ justificatory language and reflective decision-making, rather than on design outputs.

4. Who will be involved, and in what way? 

Student participants: Stage 2 and Stage 3 BA Architecture students at Central Saint Martins. Students participate through normal studio teaching activities that form part of the curriculum. Participation in the research element of the project is voluntary and separate from assessment.

Researcher / educator: Myself, as studio tutor and practitioner-researcher, responsible for designing, facilitating, and reflecting on the pedagogical sequence. My role is to support learning and critical reflection rather than to evaluate individual students.

Teaching partner: A co-tutor who supports delivery of the workshop and takes contemporaneous notes on the flow of discussion and levels of engagement. Their role is observational and supportive rather than evaluative.

Wider community: No members of the local community or residents of the Dorset Estate are involved as research participants. Students do not collect personal data from residents and are explicitly instructed not to seek information about income, health, or family circumstances.

All participants are adults (18+). No vulnerable individuals are involved, and no participation takes place outside the studio teaching context.

5. What are the health & safety concerns, and how will you prepare for them?

The teaching and research activities will occur in regular studio teaching settings, following UAL’s Health & Safety and Wellbeing Policy. The main consideration is emotional sensitivity: discussing or representing domestic spaces and users groups may surface private or difficult experiences. To mitigate this:

• Students are informed that they may choose abstract or fictional approaches.
• Any distress will be managed with empathy and appropriate signposting to UAL support services.
• Group discussions will have clear ground rules for respect and care.

No physical risk or hazardous activity is involved.

6. How will you manage and protect any physical and / or digital data you collect, including the data of people involved?

• All teaching and research activities will take place within normal studio teaching environments and will follow the University of the Arts London Health & Safety and Wellbeing policies. No physical risks or hazardous activities are involved.
• The primary consideration for this project is emotional sensitivity, as reflecting on or imagining domestic spaces and housing conditions may prompt personal or difficult associations for some students. This risk is addressed through the design of the activities themselves, which prioritise abstraction, fictionalisation, and demographic research over personal disclosure.
• To support student wellbeing:
• Students are explicitly informed that they are not required to share personal experiences or details about their own homes or circumstances.
• Reflective exercises allow for abstract or indirect responses rather than literal representation.
• Group discussions are structured with clear expectations around respect, care, and non-judgement.
• Any signs of discomfort will be addressed with empathy, and students will be signposted to appropriate UAL wellbeing and support services if needed.
• The project does not involve physical risk, fieldwork, or interaction with external participants, and therefore does not raise additional health and safety concerns beyond those normally associated with studio-based teaching.

7. How will you take ethics into account in your project for participants and / or yourself?

Ethics in this project are addressed primarily through pedagogical design. Activities are framed and sequenced to minimise pressure on students to disclose personal circumstances and to avoid exposing socio-economic differences prematurely. Reflective tasks allow abstraction and fictionalisation, and students are explicitly informed that personal disclosure is not required.

When working with socially sensitive housing contexts, speculative users are used as an ethical mediation tool. User profiles are informed by demographic research rather than engagement with real residents, allowing students to consider income, tenure, accessibility, and care at a structural level while maintaining appropriate ethical distance. Peer discussion and facilitated questioning support collective reflection without singling out individuals.

For myself as a practitioner-researcher, ethics are treated as an ongoing reflective process. This includes attention to power dynamics between tutor and students, clear separation between research participation and assessment, and critical reflection on how teaching practices shape representation and care. Insights from this ARP will inform future iterations of the studio as part of an ongoing Action Research cycle.

Name: Patricia Santos Vidal Tutor: Carys Kennedy Date: 21.10.25 

rev. 18.11.25 (include’s tutor’s comments)

rev. 03.01.26 (slightly updated)