Between Two Worlds: Analysing the Effects of Immersive and Non-Immersive Prototyping for Participatory Design

Participatory Design (PD) aims to create technological solutions that improve users’ lives and to foster users’ empowerment. While PD has received extensive attention regarding its processes and methods, less research exists on the effects of PD. With the increasing inclusion of Extended Reality (XR) into PD, this gap necessitates a critical analysis of how and to which end XR can be best used in PD activities to achieve the desired effects. Through the analysis of 16 XR prototyping workshops, we explore the impact of immersive and non-immersive XR prototyping on PD effects. Furthermore, we delineate differences between the immersive and non-immersive approaches. Our work contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the effects of XR prototyping for PD, rooted in theoretical and empirical insights. It further illustrates what each approach offers and presents design considerations to assist practitioners in successfully integrating XR prototyping into their design practice.