When we see an unemployed young person as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘unmotivated’, then how does that view influence the public services we design for them? Policies and services are influenced by how we see humans, and how that is informed by our worldviews and dominant paradigms. In June of this year I presented a paper – co-authored with Jennie Winhall – about such ‘images of humans’ at the DRS26 conference in Edinburgh. In the paper we explore five common views of humans – user, worker, fallible individual, consumer, and whole and social being. Based on a case study of youth unemployment, we show how such views can lead to different types of designs with fundamentally different types of outcomes. We discuss the need to include the image of humans as a topic in stakeholder conversations in a public sector design context and conclude that a holistic and social perspective on humans is required when design is aimed at addressing complex societal challenges.