This thesis presents research into what participatory Design Learning looks like ‘in the wild’, in multidisciplinary settings, framed by a contextual review of both design learning spaces and approaches - including the tools used to deliver, manage and grow learning knowledge. This then builds toward a conceptual framework for creating resilient Design Learning cultures and the understanding needed to cocreate them.

A practice-informed body of Action Research directs the discussions set out within this Thesis, and provides evidence of dialogue tools, processes and theory tested in both a private sector, and educational, setting.

This investigation of Design Learning has evolved, across a five-year process, as two Action Research cycles, four Case Studies and seven Things, conducted in Dublin, Ireland.

The first iterative cycle was undertaken when employed as a designer researcher within a private sector design consultancy. The second iterative cycle moved beyond this original context, to frame the validity and transferability of the framework, methods and tools, within a Design School context. The thesis documents a path through the investigation, and situates the work in the broader Design Learning context.

The dominant mode for building a coherent analysis from these interactions has been auto-ethnographic reflection, through a creative narrative process. This mode draws my working experiences - within academia and the design sector - together with a range of research methods. Which places the inherently, interventionist design processes, into a larger critical ecology.

Constructive, and constructed dialogues build design communication between actors, across teams, and within studios, to shape a new typology of design learning. The series of action research case studies introduces a suite of tangible dialogue tools and design learning things that leverage and strengthen pathways of communication to establish a design learning framework where actors, tools and dialogues can be aligned to connect disparate communities of learning, practice and knowledge.

In conclusion this thesis highlights the critical role that institutioning and infrastructuring play when considering the impact, value and role of dialogue tools in establishing resilient learning as a culture, as a way of-working and being in the world, not simply as a part of the design process.

During the study, the participatory Design Learning approach I came to develop became more important as the nature of the Design School, designing and design learning changed in the face of COVID-19 disruption and transformation throughout 2020 and 2021.