Heroic Journeys: on design for empowerment and narratives of social change

Abstract

Can empowerment be designed? Designers often claim to empower the people and communities they work with, yet there is little critical discourse on how empowerment is defined, facilitated and achieved in social design projects. This paper draws on social and political theories to redefine empowerment within design for social change, positioning it as a political activity to address power imbalances and foster individual and collective potential. To guide best practices in design-led interventions, we present four Design for Empowerment (DfE) principles grounded in Empowerment Theory and introduce Heroic Journeys, a conceptual framework co-created with community organisers and social designers through participatory design workshops. This approach facilitates the implementation of power analysis and narrative techniques to uncover diverse stories of change, advocating for design practices that are transformative, inclusive, and responsive to the contextual complexities of design for social change projects.