How can extended reality (AR and VR) make public participation in urban planning more accessible, more meaningful, and more engaging? A new article by Dr. Jonas Fegert and Prof. Dr. Jella Pfeiffer has been published in the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), one of the eight journals in the AIS Senior Scholars' Basket and among the leading outlets in the discipline. The article appeared in open access on 2 September 2026.

Across three Design Science Research cycles and three empirical studies, the authors developed and evaluated an immersive e-participation application drawing on augmented and virtual reality. Citizens can use it to explore planned construction projects in situ, contribute their own suggestions, and discuss them with others. The work is firmly grounded in participation theory: the findings show that deeper levels of participation are associated with greater enjoyment, familiarity with the planning object, and confidence in decision-making. Beyond the artifact itself, the paper derives transferable design principles for aligning immersive technologies with different levels of participation.

The publication concludes a research trajectory that began with early conference contributions at WI 2020 and ICIS 2020 and continued through the Take Part prototype. Jonas Fegert leads the joint Digital Democracy & Participation research group of KIT and the FZI Research Center for Information Technology and heads the House of Participation at FZI. Jella Pfeiffer is a full professor at KIT and heads the research group "Intelligent & Responsible Information Systems (IRIS)" (Information Systems III) at the Institute for Information Systems (WIN).

The article is available open access: https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2026.2721630