Experience alone doesn’t make a Designer wise
A reflection on the lessons experienced Designers can learn from those just starting out.
Spending time with junior designers often feels like revisiting my own beginnings. Their questions, their enthusiasm, and their energy bring me back to what matters in the work.
Many of them grew up surrounded by technology. Design tools, interfaces, and creative platforms were part of their everyday life long before they joined the workforce. Because of that, they often move faster, think more visually, and see connections we might miss. But what really stands out to me isn’t just their fluency with tools, it’s their mindset.
Seeing with fresh eyes
Experience gives us shortcuts, but it can also narrow our field of view. Over time, we start relying on familiar frameworks and mental models to move quickly. Junior designers don’t carry that same weight. They walk into problems without old assumptions and ask questions others stopped asking: “Why do we do it this way?” or “What if we didn’t?”.
Those questions can feel naïve at first, but they often uncover blind spots the team has ignored for months or years. Their perspective reminds us that design isn’t about defending what we know, it’s about rediscovering what’s possible.
The gift of curiosity
Curiosity tends to fade in fast-moving organizations. Timelines, priorities, and backlogs push us toward efficiency over exploration. But juniors haven’t learned to suppress curiosity yet, and that is something worth protecting.
They will sketch more options than the brief asked for, try a wild prototype, or stay late testing an idea just because it is interesting. It can look inefficient, but that curiosity is what keeps the craft alive. It slows the team down in the best way, reminding everyone that the path to better ideas is rarely linear.
A new kind of balance
What’s refreshing about this generation is how grounded many of them are. They have seen burnout up close, in their parents, mentors, or friends, and they already understand that work is not everything. They care about balance, community, and meaning in ways that earlier generations often learned the hard way.
That awareness does not make them less ambitious. It makes them more sustainable. They want to do good work without losing themselves in the process, and to me, that is something worth listening to.
What senior designers can do
For those of us with more years in the field, the lesson is simple: stay open. Let their curiosity challenge your certainty. Let their questions remind you what it means to explore. And if you lead teams, make room for them to learn, fail, and grow. The world they’re stepping into is tougher and more uncertain than the one we started in.
Give them chances. Listen to their ideas. Protect their spark. Because experience alone doesn’t make a designer wise: continuous learning does.
A few reminders:
Stay open to questions. They often reveal what we stopped seeing.
Keep curiosity alive. It’s the best cure for stagnation.
Let energy spread. Enthusiasm lifts the whole team.
Protect the spark. Good leadership creates safety for exploration.
Rethink hiring needs. Sometimes a junior designer brings the perspective the team really needs.
Closing thought
Design isn’t just about experience or skill.
It’s about staying curious, open, and humble enough to keep learning from anyone, no matter their title or years in the field. The next generation of designers has a lot to teach us if we’re willing to listen.