Performing good design is a difficult task. To take up this challenge, practitioners rely on their repertoire of experience. Students, however, do not have any such repertoire. We propose an approach aimed at bootstrapping the repertoire. The approach is generally accomplished in two steps: tailoring the activity - acquiring a minimal structure through a deductive approach, then initializing the repertoire through an inductive approach; and performing the activity - to begin filling the repertoire whilst drawing up the design of a real-scale project.