An Autoethnographic Approach to Guide Situated Ethical Decisions in Participatory Design with Teenagers

Participatory Design (PD) methods have become a widespread practice in the development of digital technologies. Even if PD is grounded on a critical and reflective tradition, often the presence of implicit assumptions may have relevant methodological and ethical consequences, since they may unintentionally shape our way of considering or behaving with participants. To tackle this issue, we suggest that the assumptions and expectations of designers must be carefully examined. To guide this process, we propose using a self-reflexive critical practice based on autoethnography as a tool to reflect and construct knowledge out of our subjective experience of designers involved in PD. Grounded on our experience of PD with teenagers, we report how autoethnography allowed gaining a deeper understanding of one’s own positions, assumptions and contradictions on aspects related to our standpoint on participatory practices, the images that we have of participants and our role in the design process. This awareness allowed taking into account emotions, personal stories and values in ethical choices, hence guiding situated decision-making on ethical and methodological aspects. Furthermore, we suggest that this approach not only contributes to unveil incongruences and strengthens the validity of the research, but also facilitates conditions for enabling a suitable space for creation and support novel forms of reporting PD experiences.