Participating in Designing Sustainable Futures: The Challenges of Imagination and Envisioning

This paper introduces a frame of reference to the contributions presented in the “Civic issues & participation: sustainability” track of the Participatory Design Conference 2026. With it, we seek to establish a conversation between the authors and the ideas presented, recognizing emergent trends in Participatory Design current practices, as well as matters of concern in the field. Based on that observation and a critical reflection, this paper presents three major notions that we believe are of significance to the current state of Participatory Design: first, a need to continue developing forms of situated inquiry and research that not only address cultural context, but that learn from them and acknowledge situated forms of knowledge, second, a need for an open mind that defends tradition but also encourage innovation to the paradigm in a future-facing actionable way, and finally, a need to develop new types of results to participation, including those which could serve as infrastructure to the required social transformation that is intended in participatory processes.