Why good design comes from bad design

“…the first day of class I arrived at the studio room, and found a young man at a drawing table, sketching out different variations of the Walkman® he was designing. I got close enough to see the large sketchpad and saw 30 or 40 different variations that he had considered and put down on paper. I introduced myself, pleaded ignorance about design, and asked him why he needed to make so many sketches. He thought for a second, and then said, ‘I don’t know what a good idea looks like until I’ve seen the bad ones.'”