Hey Reader,

What is DESIGN DOING?

Not the brilliant textbook version (hat tip to the team at This is Service Design Doing!).

Not the conference talk version.

Not the version with the perfectly curated Miro board and the journey map that looks like it belongs in a gallery.

I mean the real version. The one that happens on a Tuesday afternoon in a government building with bad coffee and a room full of people who have never heard the phrase "double diamond" and honestly could not care less.

I have been thinking about this a lot today. I cycled home after walking through six months of research and data on a large government project that has been in the works.

A lot of the work has been helping to understand where to place organisational effort and investment. Where should the money go? Where should the people go? What to prioritise and what to park?

It might come as a shock to some people, but no post-its were harmed in the making of this project.

The majority of it was conversations. Managing expectations of stakeholders. Conducting research at scale. Synthesising what we heard into something that helps people make better decisions.

Was this Service Design doing?

You betcha.

And this is the stuff that often gets overlooked in courses, because it is super hard to teach and - let's be honest - quite boring compared to a nice workshop with coloured markers and a timer on the screen. Nobody is posting a photo of a spreadsheet on LinkedIn with the caption "day one of discovery." But maybe they should.

Rather than tell you about this at length, I thought about it on the cycle home and realised something. Fifteen years ago, I would not have been able to do this. Not only would I not have had the experience, but I also lacked some critical skills.

Not the skills you would expect. Not Figma. Not prototyping. Not "design thinking facilitation."

The unsexy ones. The ones that actually matter.

Here they are.

1. Use my ears more than my mouth.

I still struggle with this. I can talk too much at times - anyone who has been on the podcast with me knows I occasionally need to rein it in. But for the most part, I have become a better listener. How do I know? I understand problems more quickly, and I can recall conversations afterwards. That is the test. If you walk out of a meeting and cannot remember what the other person actually said, you were not listening. You were waiting to talk. As Hemingway put it - "I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."

2. Taking the right notes.

Not transcribing everything. Not writing down what makes me feel smart. Taking notes that capture what matters for the decisions ahead. Admittedly, it is easier now with online meetings and transcripts, but even with all that technology, knowing what to capture is a skill. You are not a court reporter. You are a designer. Your notes should tell a story, not fill a page.

3. Asking better questions.

Not questions for the sake of conversation. The kind of questions where you already know what you need three or four steps from now, and you are quietly gathering the pieces. Like a chess player thinking five moves ahead but making it look like a casual chat. Columbo energy. "Just one more thing..." - and that one more thing is the question that unlocks everything.

4. Loving spreadsheets.

Yes. I said it. A good spreadsheet is a thing of beauty. Structuring data so you can view things differently, spot patterns, and present findings in a way that makes sense to people who do not speak design - that is a superpower.

I have genuinely grown to love this. A well-structured spreadsheet is doing more heavy lifting on most of my projects than any journey map ever did. It is kind of my new thing. Do not judge me.

5. Looking at the economics early.

This one changed everything. I used to wait until the end of a project to talk about money. Now I look at the economics of what we are trying to achieve much earlier in the process, especially around my Cost to Serve framework. I use them as the keys to the door we are trying to unlock. Because if you cannot connect your recommendations to cost, revenue, or resource allocation, you are not advising. You are decorating.

6. Reading the room.

Not the literal room - though that helps. I mean, understanding the politics. Who has power? Who feels threatened? Who is quietly on your side but cannot say it publicly? Who needs a win?

This is the invisible layer that sits on top of every project and determines whether your work actually lands or dies in a PDF that nobody opens. Kim Goodwin calls this understanding decision systems. I call it survival.

7. Being comfortable with mess.

Early career me wanted to tidy everything up immediately. Categorise it. Label it. Put it in a framework. Experienced me has learned to sit in the mess for longer. To resist the urge to make it neat before I actually understand it. Frank Long described design as a leap of faith on the podcast years ago and it stuck with me - you follow a process, but inside that process, there are moments where you do not know what is going to happen.

Those moments used to unsettle me. Now I see them as the heart of the work.

8. Translating between worlds.

I spend more time translating than I do designing. Translating what users said into language that finance teams understand. Translating what leadership wants into something a research team can actually investigate. Translating complexity into clarity without losing the nuance. It is like being a UN interpreter except nobody gives you a headset and the languages are called "design," "operations," "procurement," and "we have always done it this way."

None of these are on a typical service design course syllabus.

The post-its have their place. The journey maps have their place. But the real work - the service design that is actually doing something - happens in the conversations, the spreadsheets, the awkward silences, and the moments where you choose to listen instead of present.

If you are early in your career, you might read this and think "that sounds boring." Good. It is boring. And it is the most impactful work you will ever do.

If you are further along, you are probably nodding along and thinking "why did nobody tell me this ten years ago."

That is exactly why I run training the way I do. Not to teach people how to make a journey map - you can learn that from a YouTube video. But to build the skills that actually make the work land. The listening. The stakeholder navigation. The economics. The translation. The mess.

I wonder if you might be able to help me?

If your team needs training or service design consultancy, or if you know someone building a practice who is stuck in theory and struggling with reality, let's have a conversation. Book a call with me directly at gerry@humana.design or reply to this email. I am actively seeking additional projects at the moment.

And if you missed it - last week's newsletter on The Age of Design Punk seemed to hit a nerve. If you have not read it, it is worth a look. Same energy as this one. Back to basics.

Stay punk.

Gerry

Gerry Scullion​ Founder & Designer ​ We are building a global network of people doing human-centred work. Come add your name, learn, listen, connect and network - it's free!→ thisishcd.com/directory​

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