Cennydd Bowles on creating and refining

I’ve found that if you want rough indication of a designer’s experience, look at the time they spend on different stages of the design process.

Novice designers spend most of their time creating a solution, and maybe 20% refining it.

Intermediates split the time roughly evenly.

For senior designers, the ratio flips: 20% creating, 80% refining.

And the experts realise that creating and refining are actually the same thing.

This is a fabulous insight. Next week I’m heading back to Geneva to do exactly this with ISO, because ‘expert’ clients realise it too.