Scaffolding practices: A study of design practitioner engagement in design education

• An empirical investigation into how design reviews support designer formation.
• Examines verbal interactions between novice industrial designers and their tutor.
• Uses established categorization of tutor roles to describe what is accomplished.
• Discusses opportunities for novice designers to develop professional design reasoning strategies.
• Draws attention to how design alternatives function rhetorically to support design reasoning.

The paper presents a study of tutor-student design reviews that form part of formal Industrial Design education. It is motivated by interests in how design expertise is acquired through experiences of designing and how novice designers are assisted to develop their own positions as designers. It explores the ways a professional designer tutor directs, guides and encourages students' engagement with a design task, and presents them with opportunities to develop their own design values, preferences, and design sensibilities. It uses the empirical data to draw attention to how the potential of design proposals as rhetorical instruments to serve both designers ‘own thinking and the presentation of their designs to others is a prominent theme in the professional designer tutor's engagement.