Building Good Together, Step by Step: Co-Participatory Design for Information Access

Abstract

Discourse about information access environments “for good” are prominent across various research communities, yet it remains unclear how much of it translates into real-world outcomes—the kind of impact captured by broader societal priorities such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which no field can advance on domain expertise alone. In this position paper, we argue that the field faces a persistent gap between aspiration and practice and that closing it does not mean waiting for perfect breakthroughs. Researchers have already built a foundation that can support tangible improvements by shaping the way we conduct our experiments and studies. We advocate for the steady, incremental adoption of what we already know works, pursued not on behalf of users but with them, through co-participatory design done the right way. These “baby steps” are how the community moves from discussing information access environments for good to systematically building and deploying them.