The concept of performativity* - the symbiotic or interdependent relationship between words and actions - can be applied to design ideation. That is, ideation has a performative function in that designing is typically about change and changing the world. The overreaching transformative role or function of design, moreover, means that the workshop participants are agents for change, that is, they are seeking desirable outcomes through design thinking and making. In this performative pursuit, the participants are not so much competing to impress others - "mine idea is better than yours" - but, and more important, to develop designer authenticity and resilience, both collectively, as members of the design community, and individually, in what philosopher Martin Heidegger called our "authentic self".* How To Do Things with Words (Austin 1962) is the foundational text on performative language
