This article contributes to the growing debate within art and design education research about the role, legitimacy and accountability of artefacts in the creation and generation of knowledge. I present an artefact-based approach to visually documenting and disseminating my doctoral practice-based fieldwork that protected the anonymity of the participants whilst supporting my exploration of the situational, interactional and tacit dimensions of participation. Constructing a three-dimensional scaled model of the fieldwork setting and using narratives from my field notes, I undertook a cyclical reflective process where I reconstructed critical moments that took place. This was used as both a tool for communicating my participatory design educational practice and for evaluating my findings with the participants. By sharing this sense-making process, I offer an ethical means of visually documenting fieldwork when working in sensitive contexts and with vulnerable participants, setting out the dual role this design artefact played as both a producer and carrier of experiential knowledge.