I could do better than that

As a practical matter, I think it's easier to see ugliness than to imagine beauty. Most of the people who've made beautiful things seem to have done it by fixing something that they thought ugly. Great work usually seems to happen because someone sees something and thinks, I could do better than that.

  1. ​Notes on the Synthesis of Form​

This is a primary argument of Alexander's Notes on the Synthesis of Form — it's easier to recognize bad fit than it is to produce good fit, and so good design ends up being a process of incrementally smoothing out the rough edges of something that's not quite good enough yet.