How Do You Do Participatory Design? Toward Better Support for Learning and Practicing Participatory Design

In this paper, we reflect on learning how to do Participatory Design (PD) from a beginner’s perspective. Based on our own experiences, we discuss common challenges in PD, such as scaling up participation in larger projects, communicating outcomes clearly, and dealing with power imbalances. To open up a conversation within the PD community, we propose three themes that we see as important for supporting reflective and accessible PD: lowering entry barriers, creating shared spaces for reflection, and building supportive learning environments. These themes are not yet fully established in current PD practice–but we believe they offer valuable starting points for further discussion, especially around how to better support newcomers and foster collective learning in PD.