Abstract:

Throughout their education, design students encounter moments when seemingly small decisions can influence not only the projects they develop but also their future professional paths. However, choices such as choosing team members or defining project topics are often made without first reflecting on one’s own position as a designer. In many cases, these decisions rely on loosely considered criteria, social affinities, or circumstantial factors, which can limit both team coherence and students’ ability to strategically guide their own learning.

This paper introduces the Designer Profile Test (DPT), a pedagogical tool initially developed within the Strategic Design course of the Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering in Industrial Design and Product Development at the Universitat Politècnica de València and later applied in other international educational contexts. The DPT is a visual template that invites students to position themselves across multiple dimensions relevant to their future professional practice, including values and areas of social impact, design style, team roles, preferred stages of the design process, sectors of interest, and professional references.

The template is printed on a semi-transparent sheet that allows individual profiles to be visually overlaid. This format enables a collective dynamic in which students explore affinities and complementarities while exercising their freedom to decide how to form their teams based on a greater awareness of themselves and others. Rather than classifying students or automatically assigning groups, the tool acts as a mediating device that encourages reflection, dialogue, and conscious decision-making.

Experience shows that this approach not only leads to more coherent teams, but also helps students recognise their own singularity within the diversity of the group. At the same time, it highlights how their positioning shapes both the projects they pursue and the potential impact these decisions may have on their future professional trajectories.

In this sense, the Designer Profile Test reframes team formation from a merely logistical task into an initial exercise in strategic life design, in which students actively shape their own learning experience while exercising the freedom and responsibility inherent to their development as designers.

Keywords:

Designer identity, life design, design education, career development, reflective practice, strategic design.