This paper describes the development and results of the pedagogical photo-based method PhotoReflexivity. This method is designed to support reflexivity for students in design education, which guides them in better understanding and situating themselves in the outside world. To uncover the value of this method, mixed research methods including iterative prototypes were deployed in real-world learning scenarios with design students. Attitudes, behaviour, and reflexive conversations were analysed, from which design patterns and recommendations were derived. It is argued that PhotoReflexivity fills a gap in design education by aiming for extensive and transformational outcomes associated with reflexivity, which previous research has considered hard to achieve. It does so by providing pragmatic technologies and materials to support 1) sharing and collaboration, and 2) verbalising reflexive thoughts. By facilitating reflexivity, students might become more autonomous and responsible design professionals.
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Martijn de Waal is a senior researcher at the lectorate of Play and Civic Media and a member of the Citizen Data Lab at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Hetis the author of The City as Interface. How Digital Media Are Changing the City (2014), and the project leader of The Hackable City research project. He is also the co-founder of TheMobileCity.nl an international think tank that since 2007 addressed the relation between digital media and urbanism. His most recent book, co-authored with José van Dijck and Thomas Poell – only available in Dutch – is The Platform Society. The Struggle for Public Value in an Onlie World (2016).
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