Designing Identity: An Exploration of Youth Identity in Multimodal Design

• In Event: Textures of Social Media Exchange: Youth Identity and Digital Aesthetics in a Global Learning Environment

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore how urban high school students’ conceptions of identity are enacted through the production of multimodal design work. As part of a summer academy, participants examined themes of cosmopolitanism (Appiah, 2006) through text-based discussion, online exchanges with international youth, and designing multimodal artifacts. While common classroom practice positions design work as a tool for extending content knowledge introduced in traditional course structures, we adopt a perspective that privileges the design process and artifacts produced as means of acquiring knowledge and recursively shaping identity. The research question we sought to address was: How do urban high school students’ enact identity through designing and producing multimodal artifacts?

Emerging theories of creativity in media and online contexts suggest identity is both dynamic and discovery-based, in which acts of ‘everyday creativity’ contribute to an evolving sense of both self and others (Gauntlett, 2011). As individuals create artifacts their interests and beliefs are imprinted on the artifacts, melding literacy practices and identity in ways that reflect the personal construction of meaning (Pahl & Rowsell, 2010). From this perspective, acts of human creativity and meaning making contribute not only to literacy practices but also to an evolving and recursive process of identity formation. While much of the literature concerned with the relationship between identity and creativity utilizes interviews of those deemed as exceptional creative (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Gardner, 1993), our work seeks to broaden an understanding of the process of identity formation that is informed by experiences of creativity in traditional educational contexts.

This study was part of a larger research project in which 25 high school seniors participated in a summer academy designed to introduce youth from underserved communities to a college-like program. As a multiple case study within a bounded system, our work examined student participation, self-reflection, and program-generated artifacts to address the research question. Data from semi-structured interviews, student-created artifacts, fieldnotes, and video and audio recordings of program activities were crystallized across multiple sources to develop nuanced descriptions of case-based themes (Creswell, 2007; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). Researcher collaboration in multi-site interpretive communities (Miles & Huberman, 1994) further enriched our analysis.

Findings suggest that in experimenting with the role of “designer,” students purposefully appropriated formal elements of design instruction in creating their own artifacts. Moreover, students’ experiences with design may have mobilized an interrogation of personal, social, and cultural beliefs. These design experiences generated space for discussion, reflection, and insight that shifted students’ perspective, contributed to a broader sense of creative agency, and ultimately expanded notions of personal identity.

This inquiry not only complicates the theorized role of design in identity formation but also advances methodological thinking in relationship to studies of identity and creativity in applied contexts. Our work suggests that the act of designing is inherently tied to integration, reflection, and thought processes that impact participants’ self-conceptions and subsequent discussions of identity. The project also suggests implications for rethinking methodologies that position participants’ creative processes, production, and reflection at the center of the research design.

Authors

• Matthew Hall, The College of New Jersey

• Laura A. Davis, New York University