DNSEP Design, Public(s) course

The State, the regions, local authorities, public services, and political and administrative actors more generally are recruiting designers on their teams and projects more and more often, to promote an empathetic approach focused on users’ needs.

The Public(s) Design course or more precisely design in the service of public policy is a recent addition to the ESADSE courses. It invites students to focus their reflection from the outset on issues arising from the public policy field: governance, society, economics, social issues, the environment, education, health, etc.

With this in mind, on the Public(s) Design DNSEP course, we do not only provide students with classes on design methodologies and social innovation – as proposed by citizen participatory design or design thinking. We train them for comprehensive design practice (analysis, design and finalisation phases centred on political, social, environmental and, more generally, societal issues) which integrates at every stage in the creative process the established and recognised tools of co-design and others to be developed together. 

This training is deliberately cross-disciplinary and open to many aspects of design practice. The forms of design proposed by the students will therefore be polymorphous, in line with the sensitivities of each of them, their culture but also, the issues they have identified and wish to address: service, social, general interest, experiential, object, spatial, digital, graphic design, etc.

The DNSEP Objects Design course can be completed as a work-study programme in Year 5.

On 21 March 2025,Adélie Lacombe, master’s course coordinator, presented it in a webinar.
Revoir le webinaire

Coordinator (Years 4 and 5) : Adélie Lacombe 
A designer and a graduate of ENSCI-Les Ateliers, Adélie Lacombe worked for four years as a designer at the Interministerial Directorate for Public Transformation (DITP). An expert in public policy design and strategy, for several years she has been developing collective intelligence methods based on bespoke tools designed according to context. She uses the tools of design to transform administrative and political processes to make them more accessible, inclusive and effective. Her degree project entitled Plans sur la gommette was awarded 1st prize in the Service Design category of the Graduate Design Awards in 2018.

Since 2012, at ESADSE we have been keeping a record of our graduates’ work, which you can browse here:
Découvrir les DNSEP design mention Public(s)