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.