Spring 2027

Civic Design: Systems Thinking in Public Service Design

Hands-on introduction to civic design focusing on service design, systems-thinking, and participatory methods in public sector contexts, including team-based prototyping with government or nonprofit partners.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

What you’ll be able to do

  • Differentiate civic design from related design fields and articulate the implications of those differences for public-sector work.

  • Apply systems-thinking to analyze a public-sector service ecosystem.

  • Produce clear service representations that communicate opportunities and risks to multiple audiences.

  • Integrate multi-stakeholder feedback to iterate on concepts and prototypes, documenting how feedback informed design decisions.

  • Design, prototype, and propose a feasible service improvement for a live public-service context and evaluate outcomes against defined criteria.

  • Situate course work in relevant scholarly and professional literature.

  • Justify design decisions by explicitly addressing ethical considerations in systems-thinking and service design.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades

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Prerequisites

Course map

None

  • None
DS 525

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • None

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

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SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LAB 001Classroom Instruction0 / 200

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Hands-on introduction to civic design and the role of designers in the public sector. Examination of service design, systems-thinking, and participatory methods applied to government and community contexts. Team-based partnership with a government agency or nonprofit intermediary to brainstorm, prototype, iterate, and propose a service improvement.

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Civic design and the role of designers in the public sector
  • Service design, systems-thinking, and participatory methods in government and community settings
  • Designing, prototyping, and proposing feasible service improvements for live public-service contexts

Skills

  • Service design, systems-thinking, and participatory methods for government and community contexts
  • Brainstorming, prototyping, iterating, and proposing service improvements through team partnerships
  • Integrating multi-stakeholder feedback to iterate on concepts and prototypes
  • Addressing ethical considerations in systems-thinking and service design

Grades

Instructor

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Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

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Selected offering source records
DS 525 · Spring 2027

Civic Design: Systems Thinking in Public Service Design

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:359:027479",
    "course_id": "DS 525",
    "course_uid": "course_940e447e77be7fe14902c52f",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "027479",
    "source_subject_id": "359",
    "title": "Civic Design: Systems Thinking in Public Service Design",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Not Applicable"
  }
]
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Madgrades

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Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "a70e46fd768cc85ac582db0d9e674047f561abec3351b605d4d97ef7a01828d2",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}