A government agency redesigns its benefits application process. The new system is faster, more efficient, and easier to navigate. Yet something troubling emerges in the data: approval rates drop among applicants without internet access, those with irregular work histories, and people who struggle with standardized forms. The service improved by every traditional metric while quietly concentrating power in the hands of those who already had it.

This pattern repeats across healthcare portals, banking apps, and municipal services. We optimize for efficiency and user experience without examining whose experience we're optimizing. The result is services that feel modern and responsive while systematically advantaging some users over others. Power operates through service design whether we acknowledge it or not.

Service designers face a fundamental choice that often goes unexamined. Every design decision—what information to share, who can make exceptions, how feedback flows—either concentrates or distributes power within the system. Understanding this dynamic transforms service design from a technical discipline into a political one. Not political in the partisan sense, but in the deeper sense of how we organize collective decision-making and resource allocation. The question isn't whether to engage with power. It's whether to do so consciously.

Power in service systems rarely announces itself. It operates through three primary mechanisms that shape every user interaction: information asymmetry, dependency creation, and gatekeeping. Each mechanism appears in service designs we encounter daily, often invisible precisely because it seems so natural.

Information asymmetry emerges whenever one party knows more than another. A hospital patient doesn't know what treatments exist, what they cost, or what outcomes to expect. A loan applicant doesn't know the approval criteria or how their application compares to others. This asymmetry isn't incidental—it's often built into service architecture. Knowledge bases remain internal. Pricing structures stay opaque. Decision criteria go unpublished. The justification is usually complexity or competitive advantage. The effect is power concentration.

Dependency creation occurs when services make users reliant on continued access. Subscription models, proprietary data formats, and ecosystem lock-in all create switching costs that reduce user autonomy. A customer who has spent years building history with a bank, accumulating loyalty points with an airline, or storing data in a particular cloud service faces real costs to leave. These dependencies aren't accidents. They're strategic choices that shift bargaining power toward the service provider.

Gatekeeping happens when services control access to resources or opportunities. Benefits administrators decide who qualifies. Hiring platforms determine whose applications get seen. Content algorithms choose what information reaches whom. Gatekeeping power concentrates at decision points—and modern service design often obscures these points behind automated systems and opaque criteria. The gatekeeper disappears while the gate remains.

Recognizing these mechanisms matters because they operate regardless of designer intent. A well-meaning team can create a service that concentrates power through sheer inattention to these dynamics. The service works beautifully for users who already navigate systems well. It fails quietly for everyone else. Power analysis isn't about assigning blame. It's about seeing clearly what our designs actually do.

Takeaway

Every service design embeds power relations through information asymmetry, dependency creation, and gatekeeping—whether designers intend it or not.

Designing for power distribution requires moving beyond good intentions toward concrete patterns that shift agency. Three redistribution strategies prove most effective: radical transparency, exit-enabling design, and participatory governance. Each addresses a different mechanism of power concentration.

Radical transparency attacks information asymmetry directly. It means publishing decision criteria, sharing the data used to evaluate users, and explaining algorithmic recommendations. Healthcare systems that show patients their full records and treatment options. Lending platforms that reveal approval criteria and comparative rates. Government services that explain exactly why applications were denied and what would change the outcome. Transparency isn't just making information available—it's making it usable by designing for comprehension, not compliance.

Exit-enabling design counters dependency creation. This means portable data formats, published APIs, and interoperability standards that let users take their history elsewhere. It means avoiding dark patterns that make cancellation difficult. It means designing services that work well for users who might leave, not just those who stay. Counterintuitively, easy exit often increases loyalty. Users who feel free to leave trust more than users who feel trapped.

Participatory governance addresses gatekeeping by involving users in rule-making. This goes beyond feedback surveys to include user representation in policy decisions, community oversight of algorithmic systems, and transparent appeals processes with real authority to overturn decisions. The goal isn't eliminating gatekeeping—resource allocation requires decisions—but distributing the power to shape how those decisions get made.

These patterns share a common thread: they accept short-term costs for long-term legitimacy. Transparency invites scrutiny. Easy exit enables departure. Participation slows decisions. Organizations that embrace these patterns bet that distributed power creates more sustainable value than concentrated control. The evidence increasingly supports this bet, though the transition period remains genuinely difficult.

Takeaway

Power redistribution follows concrete patterns—radical transparency, exit-enabling design, and participatory governance—each requiring organizations to trade control for legitimacy.

Power-distributing service design fails without corresponding organizational change. Designers can sketch participatory systems, but those systems won't survive contact with organizations structured around concentrated authority. The design challenge extends far beyond interfaces and processes into organizational culture, incentive structures, and leadership philosophy.

Frontline workers occupy a crucial position in power distribution. They're where abstract policies meet individual circumstances. Organizations that genuinely distribute power grant frontline staff discretionary authority to make exceptions, override algorithms, and adapt services to context. This requires training that develops judgment rather than enforcing compliance. It requires performance metrics that value outcomes over process adherence. It requires management systems that support workers who bend rules appropriately.

Middle management often resists power distribution because their traditional role involves controlling information flow and decision authority. Reorganization toward distributed power redefines this role from gatekeeper to enabler—from someone who approves decisions to someone who builds decision-making capacity in others. This transition threatens identity and status. It requires intentional support, new career pathways, and genuine respect for the enabling function.

Leadership must model the vulnerability that power distribution requires. Transparent systems expose organizational failures. Participatory governance invites criticism. Easy exit means losing some users. Leaders who respond defensively to these outcomes undermine the entire effort. Sustainable power distribution needs leaders who treat distributed scrutiny as a feature rather than a threat.

The deepest organizational implication concerns metrics. Traditional service metrics—efficiency, throughput, satisfaction scores—don't capture power distribution. New metrics must measure user autonomy, information accessibility, appeal success rates, and the diversity of users who successfully navigate the system. What gets measured shapes what gets done. Organizations serious about distributing power must build measurement systems that make distribution visible and valued.

Takeaway

Service designs that distribute power require organizations that distribute power—changing frontline discretion, middle management roles, leadership posture, and measurement systems.

Power distribution through service design isn't a technical problem with technical solutions. It's a political choice that reshapes relationships between organizations and the people they serve. The design patterns exist. The organizational models are documented. What remains is the will to implement them.

The difficulty is real. Concentrated power benefits those who hold it, and they typically shape organizational priorities. Distributing power means powerful actors choosing to become less powerful—a rare occurrence without external pressure or exceptional leadership.

Yet the alternative grows increasingly untenable. Services that concentrate power generate resentment, workarounds, and eventually resistance. The choice isn't between distributed power and stable control. It's between intentional distribution and eventual forced redistribution. Design can lead this transition or be swept along by it.