Digital health services are meant to empower users to manage their own health, and lead to better informed, more engaged patients. To this end, user centred design has incredible potential to support people towards healthier lives, and alleviate pressure on health systems. However, to what extent has the rhetoric of empowerment in the context of technology been diluted to the point that when we speak of "empowering users", what we really mean is "let's get the service user to do our job for us" . While it is easy to become disillusioned with erosion of the empowerment agenda's activist roots, user centred design, by its very nature, allows for a fundamental change in power dynamics between service users and service providers. This presentation will apply a social psychological lens to academic theory, industry best practice, and real-world stories outlining the intersection between empowerment and digital design.

1. When are we empowering users,
and when are we just being
lazy?
Katherine Benjamin
@mskatiebenjamin
Can't someone else do it?

2. It always seems impossible until
it's done
Nelson Mandela

3. Why
should I care about
empowerment?

4. What is empowerment?
Hint: the clue is in the word

5. Empowerment
1) the process of enhancing the capacity of
individuals or groups to make choices and
2) to transform those choices into desired
actions and outcomes
(World Bank)

6. Dominant groups
seldom voluntarily
relinquish power
without vociferous
demands from the
excluded
Campbell & Cornish (2010)

7. Empowerment in the
digital age

8. You can't change what you
don't know

9. 1 in 4
Ipsos Healthcare. (2015)

10. 1 in 20
Google (2015)

11. more information isn't
always good
Marteau, Dormandy and Michie (2001)

12. The opportunity

13. 60 to 70 per cent of premature
deaths are caused by behaviours
that could be changed
Schroefer (2007)

14. From nebulous to nuanced
(in two easy steps)

15. 1. quantify

16. Health Confidence Score
1. Knowledge
2. Self-management
3. Navigation
4. Involvement Tim Benson and R-Outcomes Ltd 2015
www.r-outcomes.com

17. 2. Empowerment by process,
product, or both?

18. User-testing and co-
production are interelated, but
not interchangeable

19. Co-production is empowering

20. Necessity is the
mother of
invention

21. Tell me and I forget
Show me and I remember
Involve me and I understand

22. Questions?
@mskatiebenjamin