More Than Taste

Speaker A: Welcome to the Daily Sprint where today is a great day to design. How are your design taste buds? Do you have good taste? Do you have bad taste? Should we even be talking about this thing people are calling taste? We'll talk about what it is and why you need to be concerned with far more than taste. I'm Darrel Esterbrook. For 30 years into UX product design. Yes, tastes may change, but the way we go about design hasn't. But I'm still just getting started. I'm also the founder of Designy, a platform for product designers who want to design with a. Why? I coach designers into leaders through real time, interactive product specific guidance. Find out more and get on board with a free newsletter@designy.com that's Design with a Y dot com. So welcome. It's episode 18 if you can believe that. It's a lot of weeks, we do it once a week. But the Daily Sprint happens for you every day. So glad you're here. Hey, if you get value out of the Daily Sprint, please like and subscribe. If you're on a platform with ratings, a five star rating will really boost awareness and help this podcast get into the hands of other designers. Really appreciate it. So taste. What is taste? It's popular. It's a popular term. It's not a new term. The funny thing is I never really heard it applied to product design until this year. It's popped up. Especially if you're on LinkedIn. Um, anywhere that comments are posted, you'll find taste and it's usually just been a cultural reference like about style. Uh, you have good taste, that's a good thing. Great. And we move on to something else. But it's now this professional thing, or at least it's in the spheres I'm in and what's going on with it. So I think I've seen it in correlation with a lot of talk about AI. It's funny because everyone is trying to justify the plunge into AI. There's so many posts about just it's revolutionizing everything that a designer has ever done forever. Which, okay, those are fine. But it seems like you see this posted with uh, AI is fine, but uh, you're still going to need taste, you're still going to need judgment, you're still going to need these things. I think every designer knows deep down that AI is not actually designing. It really takes away your ability to think, think and create over time. It's being handed to you with some prompting. You feed it in this information and will get a result that's been already thought through. And in the greatest sense of the word, it's just being handed. I mean, that's ultimately it. So the justification is to use AI. You still need taste. But what does that mean? What is taste? I think the Internet is using taste as an instinct for refined products. Like, that would be the definition. So, like, if you're making dinner and you open up a box of Mac and cheese, that wouldn't be refined in the sense, as in you made the pasta, got three different kinds of cheeses and grated them and heated them in a certain way, added other ingredients, right temperature, the right timing, and then you put it together. You all together balance the flavors. That would be refined. You have good taste in Mac and cheese. But if someone was making an app, you kind of the same correlation. Maybe if you just use the out of the box elements, just the default HTML, it wouldn't be refined, so to speak, as opposed to using typography and color and composition and then, of course, laying things out in a certain way, uh, over a workflow that would be refined. Anything. Art, fashion, cars, interior design, all of these have a sense of taste. There's a refinement that's there. Um, but that's not really the thing. I don't like the term because it's very subjective. It's my taste or it's your taste. I like this car. We can all agree that this car, if you own this car, you have good taste. But that's not what we're doing. In fact, that's not what any of that is doing. Ultimately, the taste is like a lagging indicator. It's really, Are you recognizing design that someone has put the care, like the Mac and cheese into all those aspects of producing this thing in a structured way that has a result that is definitely refined. It's on purpose, it balances, it blends well together. And you recognize that. And some people recognize it instinctively, some people don't care about it. I guess this is one side of the spectrum. But if you do recognize it, that's like a level one. If you understand why it is the way it is, you're getting more into the mind of the designer. Maybe you appreciate it at some other level. We're not doing subjectiveness in this. This isn't just, oh, that was so and so's preference. And therefore it worked out well. And we just like that now. I think every creative effort that exists is not subjective. Right. Opinion really doesn't have anything to do with it. It's always about purpose. Right. Are you communicating the message effectively or not? And when I say message, I mean if it's a car, there's a message there. There's a purpose for that machine and all different aspects of it. It's not just to get you from A to B. That is part of it. It's a core reason. But there's all sorts of other aspects of it that can be refined or not refined. And then, uh, people kind of muddy it up with taste. So how do you know if you've achieved a sense of taste, if we're going to even use that term? But it's not taste, it's a skill. It's not your opinion of a thing. It's knowing how the medium works. Every medium we use. If again, I go back to the car or the Mac and cheese, like the medium of food or the medium of the vehicle, the medium of product design, right? There are these aspects of it, uh, tools, components, dimensions that make it the thing it is. Like, that's what you have to work with, building building blocks. And do you know how that works? Product design is very interesting because it has a lot of graphic design in it, a lot of this, um, communication design. And then you've got this fourth dimension of interactivity. This is very intriguing kind of medium. But you can achieve this sense of. By knowing that medium, being a person who thinks about outcomes. Because even if you're making Mac and cheese, there's an outcome you're after. Otherwise, you just grab the box of Mac and cheese and make it. There's an outcome that you're thinking about. And to know the outcome is what affects your design decisions all along the way. Which brings me to the process. You have to know the design process, because then you can purposefully follow or break those constraints. It's always about purpose. It will always be about purpose. So the Internet is trying to tell you that you can use AI as long as you have a sense of refinement. And I say whatever you use to create, you must have a knowledge of design. Without it, it's guesswork, right? This is the design process and the medium, all of those things. Outcomes. You'll never be able to communicate design decisions to anyone if you don't know how all of that works. Because you may end up guessing on things or copying what someone else does. If you have good taste, just copy that. AI generates this thing that's like this other thing. And okay, we want the thing, we want that style, we want that. But you don't know why it works. You just Know that it is. If you go down that path, you'll end up being a human in the loop. And I think the human in the loop is another excuse to try to say, hey, we still need judgment. We still need this thing. But. But really it's pushing a button. It's being, okay, okay, okay. Approving things instead of actually designing. So we don't want to go there. That's not what we want to do. We want to think thoughtfully. So I found this post on LinkedIn. Let me see if I can bring this over here. And this is by Thomas Cast. He's an art director. Don't know him personally, but I really like what he had to say. I just want to kind of read this and comment on it. We talk a little bit about it. It's a great piece on what we're talking about. Inflation of taste and creativity in the AI era, he says, I hear this quite a lot. AI doesn't kill design. It merely accelerates the iteration process. What matters now is taste and good judgment. Designers with taste are needed more than ever. He says, sounds reasonable. If we assume that taste is a static plus binary thing, as in, you either have it or you don't, nothing's further from the truth. And now I pause there and agree and say, yeah, it does speed up. I mean, AI definitely speeds it up. You can go from taking days to create screens to seconds. But that's not the point. And it's not even just a, um, process change now we're using this new tool. No, there's actually a loss in the act of handing that over to automation. And this thing of taste being static and like, you have it or you don't, uh, it's not. There is so much dynamic nature that's happening in design, even in product design, that, um, that's one of the reasons why purpose drives design. Because even in a project, if you've been involved in any product design project, you know that what you thought you started out with at the beginning of the project, project with the purpose. Within the first week of doing it, you've already discovered new things that have altered that purpose, and therefore the design needs to be altered. So it's very dynamic. Definitely in a dynamic career. Um, here. So back to the post. He says taste and good judgment are one's reaction to the surrounding reality. To top that off, the development of taste isn't linear. Just because you've got good taste today doesn't mean you still have it tomorrow. That's right. He says, look at this example of A hypothetical music band, Your favorite music band. The first albums were fine, then we got a few great ones. Then there was a period of shameless money grabbing mediocrity until they ended up producing repetitive rubbish that no one can listen to anymore. Sound familiar? Right. So he's talking at a broader level of kind of the story arc of, um, an entity producing a thing. And then they started out with their own sense of creativity and purpose, and then they started following what was happening around them in order to chase the metric, the money grab mediocrity. And then it's rinse and repeat because, you know, it works. So that's not what we're doing. That's not design. It's definitely not a vision. And so, he continues, it gets much worse with design. Unlike art, design needs a purpose to exist. Now I'll pause right there and comment that art also has a purpose to exist because it's not arbitrary, it's not random. Art still communicates a message and there's a reason to do it. And there's a medium involved and you can break or conform to the rules. Uh, but in the end you're producing a thing. And of course the skill in which you produce it could be refined. Uh, but yeah, it all needs purpose. Creativity needs purpose to exist. And exist is really to fulfill its purpose, to have an outcome, intended outcome. He continues, in contrast to many artists, designers never have 100% creative control over their work since there are too many people to please along the way. The art director, the copywriter, the client, the current trends, etc. Then there are portfolios completed to please the recruiters rather than showcase originality. After all, you ought to demonstrate that you are a good fit. A good fit meaning do exactly what everybody else does, only cheaper and faster. And I pause again and say, uh, yeah, there are too many, he says, too many people to please along the way. I rush towards that and embrace it and say, those are the people that are on board with this product when you aren't. Let's see, we'll back it up and say, as the Designer, you aren't 100% in creative control over your work. But that's not the job. The job is to shape the vision and the purpose and give it direction so that it achieves that outcome. It's very, uh, we could say business oriented, but there are a lot of people involved. The art director, the copywriter, the client. Each one of these are people. They're not static either. They have experience, they have ability, and they are contributing in a greater or lesser sense to the overall product. And you have to work with that as a constraint. It's another design element. Um, the art director may have an arbitrary reason for saying something, unfortunately, that's not purposeful, but for you, it becomes the purpose. So the challenge is, how are you going to do the best work you can and still deliver that outcome? That's the challenge. You can do it. It is possible. Absolutely. But he's absolutely true about, um, portfolios used to please recruiters and things like that, that you're a good fit. And I would say the same thing about being a good fit. This is the fundamental thing. What is true and display that, what you do. We talked about this in another episode of Effortless. What is effortless to you? Well, do that. Do that. Well, the best you can do. That's what you're presenting. People can take it or leave it. And that's the hard part. When you see all these other things happening around you and you just want to follow the trend, it doesn't end well, because that's not. Not who you are. It's not what you're doing. And he kind of says that this is great. Uh, he continues, so designers censor themselves. Quote, this is far too wacky for my cd. The client will never take a risk with this. Quote, this is not what they expect to see at the XYZ agency. Let's give them what they want. And then he says, then there's AI the one size, fit all, aesthetic everyone, everybody in the corporate world is willing to die for. So then he asks some questions. These are great questions. How are designers to retain good taste and judgment? If good taste and judgment aren't rewarded anymore, how is it possible not to give in to mediocrity? We live in a world that favors speed, efficiency, conversion rates. There's no place for error, for wavering and experiment. AI does it for you. Now, designers with taste are needed. That may be, but will anyone listen? So he has the rhetorical question, but of course I want to answer them. There's got to be an answer. So, M. What do you do? Yeah. If it's not rewarded anymore, how do you not give in to mediocrity? You know, I think the balance here is staying true to what you do. What is design? What does it mean to be refined? What does it mean to take the medium and with all those principles and apply them in a way when you're requested to for a job in the highest skill possible and as effective as possible? That's the talent, the Rest of what's swirling around with AI, not AI, there's a lot of discussion, there's a lot of artificial, artificial intelligence, there's a lot of artificial promotion happening. There's real things happening as well. AI does have a number of use cases that are practical and yet at the same time it's very tenuous. And so depending on your use case, it may not be where you need to put all the baskets. And I think I end up coming down on we were made, we were created. We're people, we're made in the image of God. He was a creator. He is a creator. He's the creator. And so we have this ability to create. We don't need to offload it to anything else. We need to continue creating. And in doing so, we're collaborating, we're working together, we're learning, we're encouraging and we're producing a thing. And hopefully the thing you're producing is a helpful thing. It helps another person do what they were made to do. That's the top of the line. I think all of the other questions, all the other pressures, everything that's happening in uh, the doom scrolling, if you keep going through that, it's not helpful. So thank you, Thomas Cast for that piece. Check out his link. Uh, there you see thomascast art. Um, but yeah, we're all facing this as creatives. So what do you do about this taste? Well, I don't want to use the term because there's too much baggage in it now. And besides, I don't think stakeholders know what you mean by it. If you're going to use taste. I have taste. Does the design team have taste? Yeah, you can't measure it. It's one of those things. It sounds great, but let's talk in terms of purpose, clarity, refinement. These are tangible criteria you can relate to. And they're actionable. They can be actionable. You can't just have taste, uh, and even purpose and clarity and refinement. Those things are great, but they don't stand alone. You need process. And when you're presented with a design, do you know how to look at it? That's kind of the challenge. Can you decompose it as to why it works? I mean, AI is going to present you with a, uh, design. Can you understand it? Can you decompose it? Can you assess the merits of it, of its effectiveness because of what was done with it for product design? Can you explain why every element on the screen is there? Can you explain the job that those elements are doing and what happens to the outcome if those elements are absent? So many times I've seen designers put, uh, a key line to separate elements or borders on things, or a, uh, drop shadow. It's like, why is that there? It's not arbitrary. It does a thing. It's a very useful tool. All of those things used in the wrong way, used in an ineffective way, it's not refined. But if you can use them in such a way to create this effect, then you can achieve any outcome that you set out to do. And that's valuable. Be that person. And I can help too. I've, uh, produced a masterclass that's called Design for Value. And I go through the design process I've developed over the years. We've talked about it many times on the Daily Sprint. But it's not just to have you give you a strong basis for product design, but it's the same process that you can use to communicate design decisions with stakeholders. These are hand in hand types of things. It's not an isolated, like learn this skill, how to make screens, or learn this leadership skill. No, this intertwined. You do it every day. Uh, and you may be doing it by accident. Well, I want to help you do it on purpose. So you can check that out@designiacademy. Specifically, it's academy.dezigny.com well, thanks for listening to the Daily Sprint. Please follow subscribe on whatever platform that you're listening to right now. Um, I would love to have you as a guest on the Daily Sprint. You can go to designy.com in a button on the bottom of the screen, on every page there's, uh, an application to become a guest. I'd love to hear what you have to say about taste. Awesome. And in any case, go to designy.com Sign up for the free newsletter. Follow all these discussions and more. That's Designy Design with a y dot com. Thanks for listening to the Daily Sprint. Remember, today is a great day to design with a Y. See you later.