This workshop paper examines challenges in designing agentic AI systems from a citizen-centric perspective. Drawing on three participatory workshops conducted in 2025 with members of the general public and cross-sector stakeholders, we explore how societal values and expectations shape visions of future AI agents. Using constructive design research methods, participants engaged in storytelling and lo-fi prototyping to reflect on potential community impacts. We identify three key challenges: enabling meaningful and sustained public engagement, establishing a shared language between experts and lay participants, and translating speculative participant input into implementable systems. We argue that reflexive, long-term participation is essential for responsible and actionable citizen-centric AI development.
@article{arxiv.2602.08554,
title = {Three Lessons from Citizen-Centric Participatory AI Design},
author = {Eike Schneiders and Sarah Kiden and Beining Zhang and Bruno Rafael Queiros Arcanjo and Zhaoxing Li and Ezhilarasi Periyathambi and Vahid Yazdanpanah and Sebastian Stein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.08554},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
PARTICIPATE-AI: A Workshop at the 2026 ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (ACM IUI)