Hello, Reader,

There’s a part of design work we rarely speak about.

Not because it’s unimportant — but because it’s uncomfortable. Unglamorous. Unshareable.

It’s the “what’s the f#cking point?” stage.

The part where you’re deep in the work, and nothing seems to move. The part where enthusiasm evaporates and the daily tasks feel like pushing wet sand uphill. Where you’re having more low days than high ones. Where it feels like you’re the only one who still cares.

You might be in a government project and suddenly realise the decisions are being made far above your head. You might be working with a client who signed off on your proposal — but didn’t buy into the work. You might be staring at your figma file, your Miro board, your research plan… wondering if any of it will make a damn bit of difference.

This stage is contagious.

It trickles into team stand-ups. It seeps into strategy decks. It hangs over design crits like fog.

And here’s the kicker: no amount of frameworks or sticky notes will fix this. No “Top 10 Things Designers Should Do” article will break the spiral.

Because this stage? It’s existential.

It challenges why you do this work in the first place.

Now, it would be easy to sit here and preach what to do. But advice rarely lands when you’re in the middle of it. Every team is different. Every context is messy. Every power dynamic has its own backstory.

The only thing you can reliably control is your mindset.

Your rhythm. Your breath. Your attention.

And sometimes — sometimes — that’s enough.

I hate to quote Mike Tyson, but he got it right:

Designers and changemakers always have a plan — until the real work starts. Until we hit the bureaucracy, the politics, the burnout, the deeply embedded systems that don’t want to change.

And yet… there’s something that’s kept me going in these moments. A way of reframing that gives me just enough ground to keep showing up.

It’s the concept of “small islands of coherence” from the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine.

Prigogine studied complex systems far from equilibrium — places that were volatile, disordered, seemingly unsalvageable. And what he found was this:

When I read that, I thought: That’s it. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Human-centred design isn’t about tidying up mess. It’s not about fixing everything. It’s about creating conditions for new possibilities — even if they’re tiny, even if they’re fragile.

That moment when a frontline staff member sees themselves as a designer? That’s an island. That meeting where a stakeholder genuinely listens, not to defend but to understand? That’s an island. That small pilot that actually helps someone, even if it’s just one person? That’s an island.

And those islands matter.

They’re not isolated wins. They’re the building blocks of systemic change. They can interact. Connect. Influence. And over time, they can tip the balance.

So if you’re in that hard stage right now — the “what’s the f#cking point” bit — please hear this:

You are not alone. This is the work. And even when you feel like you’re doing it in the dark, you might be building coherence.

One conversation. One prototype. One person at a time.

And that, maybe more than anything else, is the point.

Finally

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Gerry Scullion​ Founder & Designer Connect with me on LinkedIn | Join our Directory | Write a podcast review for This is HCD Podcast​

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