DesignShift Practice Session: From Serving a Few to Empowering Everyone
In September 2025, we hosted a session exploring how we can move from serving a few to empowering everyone by shifting narratives.
Sign-up to get notified about future events
Session overview
The way we tell stories shapes the way we build the future. Narratives influence who holds power, how resources are shared, and what possibilities we dare to imagine. As technology reshapes society, the narratives we choose today will determine whether solutions serve a few or empower everyone.
This DesignShifts session examined how different stories about AI’s purpose lead to fundamentally different technological outcomes and social impacts.
The session was hosted alongside Kasia Kaminska and Kasia Zaniewska from Jutro Lab – a female strategic design collective that helps organizations bring meaningful change through narrative shifts, futures thinking and systems design.
Things we’ve heard during the session:
While you teach a baby to walk, you set guardrails: “don’t walk over glass, don’t go through the streets without looking” etc. AI is a bit like a baby, we are raising it, teaching it things, but setting guardrails has been very challenging.
It’s not AI taking our jobs, it’s humans developing a technology and then humans making these decisions.
-AI is a self-fulfilling prophecy of a few people, selling fear.
We went from:
AI will take our jobs
AI is a "natural" progression of technological advancements
AI will take care of our problems
AI is a Must-Have Investment to Stay Relevant on the International Stage
To:
AI for levelling the playing field
AI as a power equaliser
AI is a transparent tool for problem-solving
AI-topia is not real
Imagine what could be if it was built on principles our combined minds came up with during the session:
AI is a power equaliser; it is about truthfulness, with language attuned to the vulnerable population, obeying the law, leading to democratised access to knowledge. It is not a solution, but a problem-solving aid. Trust and transparency are built into it, not just put on top as regulations.
Collective Power
These sessions remind me of the importance of collective power. As we try to Shift the narratives – and also the future – it’s important to remember that if we want to empower everyone we have to recognize our own power. In the Cosmic Comfort Affirmation Deck, artist Yumi Sakugawa writes:
“Power is not always corrupt. Power is not always about domination or brute force ruling over those with less. POWER CAN BE SOFT. POWER CAN BE LOVING. POWER CAN BE HEALING. Power can be subtle and invisible like winds sculpting canyons into beautiful patterns or seeds bursting open to take root in the darkness of fertile soil.
Power is influence and impact, uplifting those with less, and empowering the powerless. Are you wielding your power to its full potential?”
