This paper articulates the role of the imagined user in the design choices of a higher education client with respect to a project to provide new workspaces for one of its divisions. The case study centres on the disagreements that occurred between different factions within the client organisation regarding the type of office space that was appropriate for its workforce. The paper examines the ways in which competing images of academic knowledge work and knowledge workers were conjured up in differently imagined users and deployed as persuasive user-stories in the design process. The analysis of the case uses the narratives of key project actors to identify the underlying discourses that were articulated to support particular imaginings of the user. The case shows how the successful deployment of discourses was tied up with the power wielded by particular actors at different times during the project. The paper suggests that the articulation of an imagined user implies that project actualities may be presumed as well as real and that discourse analysis provides a useful mechanism for understanding these imagined actualities.