The concept of performativity can be applied to design ideation in the sense that generating and communicating ideas have a performative function in that design practice is essentially about change and changing the world. The overreaching transformative role or function of design means that the workshop participants are agents for change, that is, they are seeking desirable design outcomes through ideation. In this performative pursuit, the participants are not so much in a competitive field to impress on others - "mine's better than yours" - but, and more important, to develop authenticity and resilience as designer, both collectively, as member of a profession ("rigour in design thinking and making"), and individually, in what philosopher Martin Heidegger called our "authentic self".
