Uttishta Sreerama Varanasi, Rūta Šerpytytė, and Joanna Saad-Sulonen. 2026. Equitable and Inclusive PD for Public Services: Using Shared Reflexivity to Unpack Enablers and Limitations. In Proceedings of the 19th Participatory Design Conference 2026, Vol. 1: Full Papers (PDC ’26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 303–314.
Abstract
Participatory Design (PD) has aimed to be an approach towards ideals of democratic empowerment, civic engagement, capacity building and emancipation, especially in the context of marginalised and vulnerable groups. To an extent, immigrants in Nordic countries can be included in vulnerable groups, since they are afforded restricted rights and access to public services as compared to citizens, facing challenges such as intentionally complex processes and a lack of accessible information in their language. While PD has been used to develop more equitable and inclusive technologies for vulnerable groups, PD literature still lacks detailed reporting and analysis on the considerations for how to engage with marginalised communities.
We use shared reflexivity to unpack three different participatory approaches to engage migrants in the context of a Finnish municipality, as part of a larger research project with PD goals of migrant integration. These approaches included working with a co-researcher from a migrant community, participatory design workshops with organisational representatives, and more direct co-design efforts with migrant women. By inviting co-researchers of these activities to reflexive sessions, we use the method of duo-ethnography to critically examine the backstage and in-between moments in participatory design, looking at the limitations and enablers of PD in supporting equity and inclusion. We discuss how PD can be seen as an enabler of access, but not necessarily of redistributed power; and the need for more equitable practices to be built into PD. Finally, we reflect on how shared reflexivity can create conditions for equity and inclusion through PD.