Future of Tacit knowledge with Celeste Volpi

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation purposes, please refer to the original audio recording.

Participants: Shreyas and Celeste Volpi (Design Researcher, TU Delft)

---

Shreyas: I read your work and went through the whole thesis. I also liked the poster—it really conveyed your work in one visual way. There’s a lot of abstraction in understanding what knowledge is and what tacit knowledge is, which is really interesting. Let me start with your motivation behind choosing this topic, especially why tacit knowledge?

Celeste: So my graduation project is about the hidden curriculum—the learnings of students that cannot be put in explicit learning objectives. When you learn how to use Illustrator, there’s a context and relationships between people that also influence what you learn. You end up learning Illustrator, but also something else, especially if it’s a group project.

This topic started because I worked for ID Academy for a couple of years.

Shreyas: Maybe you can give an introduction about what ID Academy is for those who might not know.

Celeste: ID Academy is a course at TU Delft in Industrial Design Engineering—a first-year master course for all three masters in ID. The course structure is quite interesting and very different from other courses. Students have to choose 14 workshops to do in a year. These workshops vary tremendously in topic—you can learn photography, 3D modeling, case studies from KLM to service design, big 3D printing. We even had a workshop on podcasting with Donald Norman.

Shreyas: So it’s like a one-day program for each workshop?

Celeste: Exactly. One workshop is one day. Students choose 14 of them in a year. We offer about three workshops per week, so there’s a lot of choice. As a student assistant, I had to manage student expectations, understand what workshops were working, and redesign them.

There’s this tradition in the Netherlands where you go drinking with fellow students after workshops on Wednesdays. This allowed me to talk informally with students. Many told me they felt the course was important, but they often said things like “I could have done it differently” without being able to explain why. When I asked what “getting the most out of it” meant, they couldn’t articulate it.

The board of examiners also struggled to identify what students actually learn. They learn specific skills, but those skills can become obsolete in three to four years. So what do we actually teach in this course?

Shreyas: The skills are surface level, but there’s something deeper they’re gaining that isn’t measured or understood?

Celeste: Exactly. You kind of know it helps you choose or explore, but you can’t prove it. There’s common sense—people say it helps with choosing or exploring—but these insights come in pieces. The courses offered change completely each year, so from an educational perspective, how do you know these are the right skills? They might become obsolete.

Looking at the hidden curriculum helped shift the question from “we teach these skills” to a more holistic approach. If skills aren’t the important thing, then what is ID Academy teaching? No single student takes the same workshops as another.

Shreyas: Now let’s get to defining tacit knowledge. It’s really difficult to grasp.

Celeste: It’s still difficult for me to explain and understand. Every time I review and read about it, I question if I’m approaching it correctly. In general, tacit knowledge is all the knowledge you cannot explain verbally or numerically.

A concrete example: learning to drive a car. I know where the gear needs to be, where my feet go—those are explicit learnings. But everyone who drives tells you that you actually learn to drive after you get your license. All those small things you can’t describe are there.

Shreyas: We can describe holding hands this way, pressing the brake in certain cases, but why is it difficult to explain? Is it something deeper?

Celeste: There are levels to tacit knowledge. People working with AI often talk about tacit knowledge as something that hasn’t been made explicit yet. We can’t consciously think about everything we know exactly, because it would take too much time—like how do you walk?

But there are other views saying everything is tacit knowledge, and we can only describe a small part of it. Take language—you learn grammar, which is explicit knowledge. But how you speak, when to use certain expressions… There’s an English saying “that’s not my cup of tea.” We can make it explicit by putting it in a dictionary, but when you use it, you don’t think about it. It’s just something you experience.

Shreyas: I see applications in management theory—most is explicit like presentation or oral skills, but there’s much more to interaction that isn’t explained in courses.

Celeste: Exactly. If you’re a manager, you start understanding when to say what, learning about the people you’re talking to. But it’s very difficult to explain why you get certain impressions about what kind of customer or client you have.

Tacit knowledge isn’t just something you can’t talk about—you can make it explicit to some extent, but it takes a lot of time.

Shreyas: Can you give an example of how something difficult to explain can be made explicit?

Celeste: I have an English boyfriend and I’m Italian. There was this friend of his that I didn’t understand the relationship with. She didn’t follow certain steps that, as an Italian, I would expect. In Italy, if you’re a friend of a guy with a girlfriend, you normally try to make the new partner comfortable—showing you’re only friends. It’s very tacit and cultural.

I got jealous because she didn’t give me acknowledgment that she was only a friend. When I talked to my Italian friends and my boyfriend, we reached an understanding that this was a cultural thing I wasn’t aware of but could now explain.

This relates to culture because tacit knowledge includes things you take for granted that you do without thinking. You recognize them when something goes wrong. It’s like experiential learning—checking point of views that we need to understand we have.

Shreyas: So it’s partly external—manifest as actions—but also internal in terms of mental models and schemas?

Celeste: Yes, and our schemas influence our actions. They’re entangled—there’s conversation between our ingrained schemas and procedural ways of doing things. Driving a bicycle is practical and procedural, but driving a bicycle in the Netherlands versus India—the style is more cognitive, cultural. You discover this tacit knowledge when there’s tension, when something doesn’t work.

Shreyas: When you say tension happening, how do you discover using this tension?

Celeste: When I go from the Netherlands to Italy, driving is extremely different. These are moments of tension. You ask yourself why, start reflecting. It’s a sort of learning—breaking down things you take for granted, whether procedural or theoretical. You need to use these tension moments when something doesn’t work to start questioning yourself.

Shreyas: Was your example with your boyfriend’s friend similar—were you made aware through this tension?

Celeste: Yes, if something doesn’t work, it brings attention. If you have good pasta and someone puts mayonnaise on it—as an Italian, we don’t do that. It’s a moment of tension. I decided I needed to find ways to create these tension moments, but it’s not easy. People have different learning preferences—some are good conceptualizers, others are doers who don’t think as much.

Shreyas: I’m curious about how you navigated the fuzzy front end of your research. Coming from Design for Interaction and specializing in knowledge management—how did you get to what you’re doing now?

Celeste: It’s been a very long journey. The first months were about learning—there’s so much knowledge about tacit knowledge, which is ironic. I had to identify what fields were important for understanding tacit knowledge in design education context.

I used a research design approach—start doing things and experimenting, then understand what you’re getting. My main question was: how can I unveil the hidden curriculum? I call tacit knowledge in design education the “hidden curriculum.”

As a designer doing research, you have a small idea and can put it into practice easily. You don’t need lots of literature first—you use your skills to do something, understand it, then do something else. You create contextual knowledge.

If I were in a knowledge management master, I’d probably start with questionnaires, interviews, and observations—which are important but different. With a qualitative approach, you navigate without fixing where you’re going. You create knowledge bit by bit, then look at it from above to see what area you’re in.

Shreyas: So you’re converging and diverging in cycles, which might not be common in management or educational studies?

Celeste: Exactly.

Shreyas: What is this hidden curriculum and how did you formulate it?

Celeste: In ID Academy, there wasn’t a clear curriculum, but there was a hidden curriculum that was tacit knowledge. What I identified is that the course triggers exploration in students. But what does exploration mean? If you ask students if exploration is part of the course, they’ll say yes. But if you ask what the curriculum teaches, they can’t give an answer.

Exploration means different things to different people. I tried to identify three dimensions that make people different when thinking about exploration.

The first dimension is the goal of exploration. For me, exploration means getting new stuff I’ve never heard about. For my friend who studies Strategic Design, it’s getting new stuff he knows he doesn’t know about—like when he needed to learn about Scrum.

Shreyas: So it’s either unknown unknowns versus known unknowns?

Celeste: Exactly. The second dimension is attitude—your approach to uncertainty. Some people value serendipity—they don’t want to be sure what to expect from a workshop, they just want to discover something. Others prefer having steps they can reach, achievable goals.

The third dimension is about approach—whether you follow your instincts or need guidance. Some people want structure and solid points when exploring; others just want to figure it out themselves.

Shreyas: And none of these dimensions are inherently good or bad?

Celeste: Exactly. These are just perspectives and schemas in our minds. But they can bring positive things. If I see exploration professionally, it can advance me in certain ways, but I risk not seeing what I don’t know at all. When students discuss these diversities, it comes naturally. People who prefer complete freedom might not see the risks of the other approach.

I think curriculum should accommodate all these different personality types.

Shreyas: How did you use these findings?

Celeste: I created little animals (foxes, though people say they look like moles) for the introductory lecture of ID Academy. I asked students where they put themselves on these dimensions. They discussed the benefits and risks of each way of seeing things. Many students realized that risks can also be benefits—the important thing is being aware of these ways of seeing.

I don’t have an answer for how to teach accordingly for these different students. Creating learning contexts that consider these diversities would be interesting, but I’m not sure how. I just introduced the concepts to students—it’s up to them whether to continue thinking about it.

Shreyas: Can this be translated for individuals beyond this specific course?

Celeste: Absolutely. The tool I designed is very simple—just a piece of paper where you first talk about experiences, then compare them. The experiences can be anything; workshops were just easier. After reflecting and asking why they see things certain ways, they create constructs and start writing.

The tension moment is created when you have these constructs. It’s based on the Repertory Grid Technique from the 1950s. Every individual sees the world differently and puts opposites in different ways. If I say “bad person,” your opposite might be “good person” or “gentle person.” For me, the opposite of “horrible” could be different than for you.

When you create these tension moments and ask why, you discover why you see things differently. Then you discuss why it’s different—that’s the tension.

Shreyas: What would you say is the core takeaway from your thesis?

Celeste: The diversity. I kept thinking that you should never create patterns because something’s always missing. But I learned that diversity is diverse—it’s difficult to create groups and categories, but it’s important to create enough categories to discuss diversity.

I always think every person is different, and we shouldn’t put them in categories. But for simplicity’s sake, we do. This project shows we can look at education not just as learning skills or packages of knowledge, but recognizing that we’re different. Our minds and ways of seeing things are different, so our learnings will be different.

Shreyas: What do you see as the scope of this work extending into academia or ID Academy itself?

Celeste: We’re discussing this with Janis [the instructor]. I think skills are important but not the only thing for ID Academy. Students should consider these ways of seeing implicit learnings besides mere skills.

I found other triggers of implicit learning—when choosing between workshops, you implicitly learn to choose quickly between what’s relevant for your career now versus what you want to do for fun.

Shreyas: So there’s personal development and skill development?

Celeste: Exactly. If you identify this, you can say the course isn’t just about skills but helps you reflect personally on what you like and your future career. We have another course called “Manage Your Master” that helps students create future plans. Why can’t ID Academy, which is skill-related, link to a higher perspective?

Now students explore and think about exploration methods, but these present activities could help them reflect on what they want to become. There could be more integration.

Shreyas: So instead of random workshops, it could be more conscious and connected?

Celeste: Yes, and it’s important not to have a specific goal sometimes, but to at least reflect that you don’t have one and be conscious about it.

These findings could be used in many different ways. From one side, there’s the course’s aim; from the other, there’s helping students reflect. This graduation left me with questions about how we can teach according to this hidden curriculum that’s contextual and different every time, and how we can help students reflect on their own habits of mind.

Shreyas: Thinking about virtual learning environments, there are things you learn by observing someone in action that might not translate to virtual environments. What do you think?

Celeste: I agree. There’s work on this already. Having a teacher you can observe is different from watching someone on screen. That’s why procedural tacit knowledge became important. Some designers looked at using e-learning and virtual videos to learn from experts in knife-making. They used an expert learner who asked lots of questions and boiled down information for novice learners.

It’s transferable virtually, but takes much more time. I have questions about whether we always need to explain every type of knowledge. My sister is in fourth grade in Italy and will continue studying from home through September due to quarantine. We’re not ready—we haven’t reached enough awareness about tacit knowledge we give students. We just say virtual learning feels weird or something’s missing. Something is missing—that’s tacit knowledge.

Shreyas: Your research could help curriculum experts understand what to focus on for students in these virtual situations.

Celeste: But I don’t want to convey that explicit knowledge isn’t important—it’s very important. If you integrate the hidden curriculum—some call it personal development or experiential learning—it could help students be more aware of how they see things and whether that’s good for them.

If someone always sees things professionally, is that really what they want? If so, perfect. If not, maybe they can reconsider their way of learning.

Shreyas: Thank you so much for joining us. I hope we covered your work and the implications of your research well. Good luck with your thesis defense—is it happening virtually?

Celeste: Yes, it’s happening on Zoom, probably in this same room. Thanks for letting me talk about this.

Shreyas: Good luck, Celeste.

Celeste: Thank you. Bye!

---

This interview explores Celeste Volpi’s research on tacit knowledge in design education, focusing on the hidden curriculum at TU Delft’s ID Academy and methods for making implicit learning explicit.