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  "description": "How are your design tastebuds? We’ll discuss what it is, and why you need to be concerned with far more than taste.",
  "path": "/more-than-taste/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-18T13:11:51.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.designy.com",
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  "textContent": "<a href=\"https://rss.com/podcasts/the-daily-sprint/2834283/\">More Than Taste | RSS.com</a>\n\n_Subscribe on your favorite platform_\nApple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | RSS.com for more...\n\nBecome a guest on The Daily Sprint...\n\n* * *\n\n## Transcript\n\n\nWelcome to The Daily Sprint, where today is a great day to design.\n\nHow are your design taste buds?\n\nDo you have good taste?\n\nDo you have bad taste?\n\nShould we even be talking about this thing people are calling taste?\n\nWe'll talk about what it is and why you need to be concerned with far more than taste.\n\nI'm Darrell Estabrook 30 years into UX product design.\n\nYes, tastes may change, but the way we go about design hasn't, but I'm still just getting started.\n\nI'm also the founder of designing a platform for product designers who want to design with a why.\n\nI coach designers into leaders through real time, interactive product specific guidance.\n\nFind out more and get on board with a free newsletter at designy.com\n\nSo welcome.\n\nIt's episode 18.\n\nYou can believe that.\n\nIt's a lot of weeks.\n\nWe do it once a week, but the daily sprint happens for you every day.\n\nSo glad you're here.\n\nHey, if you get value out of the daily sprint, please like and subscribe if you're on a platform with ratings.\n\nA 5 star rating will really boost awareness and help this podcast get into the hands of other designers.\n\nReally appreciate it.\n\nSo taste, what is taste?\n\nIt's popular.\n\nIt's a popular term.\n\nIt's not a new term.\n\nThe funny thing is I never really heard it applied to product design until this year.\n\nIt's popped up, especially if you're on LinkedIn, anywhere that comments are posted, you'll find taste.\n\nAnd it's usually just been a cultural reference, like about style, you have good taste.\n\nThat's a good thing.\n\nGreat.\n\nAnd we move on to something else.\n\nBut it's now this professional thing.\n\nOr at least it's in the spheres I'm in.\n\nAnd what's going on with it?\n\nSo, I think I've seen it in correlation with a lot of talk about AI.\n\nIt's funny because everyone is trying to justify the plunge into AI.\n\nThere'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 AI is fine, but you still get to need taste.\n\nYou're still gonna need judgment.\n\nYou're still going to need these things.\n\nI think every designer knows deep down that AI is not actually designing.\n\nIt really takes away your ability to think and create over time.\n\nIt'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.\n\nAnd in the sense, the greatest sense of the word, it's, it's just being handed.\n\nI mean, that's that's ultimately it.\n\nSo the justification is to use AI, you still need taste, but what does that mean?\n\nWhat is taste?\n\nI think the internet is using taste as an instinct for refined product.\n\nLike, that would be the definition.\n\nSo 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 3 different kinds of cheeses and graded them and heated them in a certain way, added other ingredients. You know, the right temperature, the right timing.\n\nAnd then you put it together, you all together balance the flavors.\n\nLike that would be refined.\n\nThat, you know, you have good taste in mac and cheese.\n\nBut if someone was making an app, you know, kind of the same correlation, maybe if you just use the out of the box elements, just the default HTML, you know, it wouldn't be refined, so to speak, unless as opposed to using typography and color and composition, you know, and then, of course, laying things out in a certain way, over a workflow, you know, that would be refined.\n\nI mean, art fashion, cars, interior design, all of these have a sense of taste, right?\n\nThere's a refinement that's there.\n\nBut that doesn't, that's not really, the thing, right?\n\nI don't like the term, because it's very subjective.\n\nIt's my taste or it's your taste, right?\n\nI like this car.\n\nWe can all agree that this car, if you own this car, you have good taste.\n\nBut that's not what we're doing.\n\nIn fact, that's not what any of that is doing.\n\nUltimately, the taste is like a lagging indicator.\n\nIt's really, are you recognizing design, right?\n\nThat 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.\n\nIt's on purpose.\n\nIt balances, it blends well together.\n\nAnd you recognize that.\n\nAnd some people recognize it instinctively.\n\nSome people don't care about it.\n\nI guess there's one side of the spectrum, but if you do recognize it, yeah, that's like a level one, if you understand why it is the way it is, you know, you're getting more into the mind of the designer, you maybe you appreciate it at some other level.\n\nAnd we're not doing subjectiveness in this.\n\nThis isn't just, oh, that was so and so's preference, and therefore, it worked out well, and we just like that.\n\nNow, I think every creative effort that exists is not subjective, right?\n\nOpinion really doesn't have anything to do with it.\n\nIt's always about purpose.\n\nRight?\n\nAre you communicating the message effectively or not?\n\nAnd when I say message.\n\nI mean, if it's a car, there's a message there.\n\nThere's a purpose for that machine and all different aspects of it.\n\nIt's not just to get you from A to B. That is part of it.\n\nIt's a core reason, but there's all sorts of other aspects of it that can be refined or not refined.\n\nAnd then people kind of muddy it up with taste.\n\nSo how do you know if you've achieved a sense of taste if we're going to even use that term?\n\nBut it's not, it's not taste.\n\nLike it's not, it's a skill, right?\n\nIt's not your opinion of a thing.\n\nIt's knowing how the medium works.\n\nEvery 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?\n\nThere are these aspects of it, tools, components, dimensions that make it the thing it is.\n\nLike, that's what you have to work with building blocks.\n\nAnd do you know how that works?\n\nProduct design is very interesting because it has a lot of graphic design in it?\n\nA lot of this, you know, communication design?\n\nAnd then you got this 4th dimension of interactivity.\n\nThis is very intriguing kind of medium.\n\nBut you can achieve this sense by knowing that medium, being a person who thinks about outcomes.\n\nBecause even if you're Making mac and cheese.\n\nThere's an outcome you're after.\n\nOtherwise, you just grab the box of mac and cheese and make it, right?\n\nThere's an outcome that you're thinking about.\n\nAnd to know the outcome is what affects your design decisions all along the way, which brings me to the process.\n\nYou have to know the design process.\n\nBecause then you can you can purposefully follow or break those constraints.\n\nIt's always about purpose.\n\nIt will always be about purpose.\n\nSo the internet is trying to tell you that you can use AI as long as you have a sense of refinement.\n\nAnd I say whatever you use to create, you must have a knowledge of design.\n\nWithout it, it's guesswork, right?\n\nThis is the design process and the medium, all of those things, outcomes.\n\nYou'll never be able to communicate design decisions to anyone if you don't know how all of that works.\n\nBecause you may end up guessing on things or copying what someone else does if you have good taste.\n\nYou just copy that AI generates this thing that's like this other thing.\n\nAnd okay, we want the thing.\n\nWe want that style.\n\nWe want that thing.\n\nBut you don't know why it works.\n\nYou just know that it is.\n\nRight?\n\nIf you go down that path.\n\nYou'll end up being a human in the loop.\n\nAnd I think the human in the loop is another excuse to try to say, hey, we still need judgment.\n\nWe still need this thing.\n\nBut really, it's, it's pushing a button.\n\nIt's being, you know, okay, okay, okay, approving things instead of actually designing.\n\nSo that's, we don't want to go there.\n\nThat's not what we want to do.\n\nWe want to think thoughtfully.\n\nSo I found this post on LinkedIn.\n\nLet me see if I can bring this over here.\n\nAnd this is by Thomas Cast.\n\nAnd then he's an art director.\n\nI don't know him personally, but I really like what he had to say.\n\nI just want to kind of read this and comment on it.\n\nAnd we talk a little bit about it.\n\nIt's a great piece on what we're talking about.\n\nInflation of taste and creativity in the AI era.\n\nHe says, I hear this quite a lot.\n\nAI doesn't kill design, it merely accelerates the iteration process.\n\nWhat matters now is taste and good judgment, designers with taste are needed more than ever.\n\nHe says, sounds reasonable if we assume that taste is a static plus binary thing, as in, you either have it or you don't.\n\nNothing's further from the truth.\n\nAnd now I pause there and agree and say, yeah, it does speed up.\n\nI mean, AI definitely speeds it up.\n\nYou can go from taking days to create screens to seconds.\n\nBut that's not the and it's not even just a, um, process, you know, change.\n\nLike now we're using this new tool.\n\nNo, there's actually a loss in the act of handing that over to automation.\n\nAnd this thing of taste being static, and like you have it or you don't, it's not.\n\nThere 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 the 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 with the purpose, within the 1st week of doing it, you've already discovered new things that have altered that purpose.\n\nAnd therefore the design has needs to be altered.\n\nSo it's very dynamic, definitely in a dynamic career here.\n\nSo back to the post.\n\nHe says, taste and good judgment are one's reaction to the surrounding reality.\n\nTo top that off, the development of taste isn't linear.\n\nJust because you've got good taste today doesn't mean you still have it tomorrow.\n\nThat's right.\n\nHe says, look at this example of a hypothetical music band, your favorite music band.\n\nThe 1st albums were fine.\n\nThen we got a few great ones.\n\nThen there was a period of shameless money grabbing mediocrity until it just ended up producing repetitive rubbish that no one can listen to anymore.\n\nSound familiar?\n\nRight?\n\nSo he's talking at a broader level of kind of the story arc of, you know, an entity producing a thing.\n\nAnd then they started out with their own sense of creativity and purpose.\n\nAnd then they started following what was happening around them in order to chase the metric, you know, the money grab mediocrity.\n\nAnd then it's rinse and repeat because you know it works.\n\nSo that's not what we're doing.\n\nThat's not design.\n\nIt's definitely not a vision.\n\nAnd so he continues.\n\nIt gets much worse with design.\n\nUnlike art, design needs a purpose to exist.\n\nNow, a pause right there and comment that art also has a purpose to exist because it's not arbitrary.\n\nIt's not random.\n\nArt still communicates a message.\n\nAnd there's a reason to do it.\n\nAnd there's a medium involved and you can break or conform to the rules.\n\nBut at the in the end, you're producing a thing.\n\nAnd of course, the skill in which you produce it is could be refined.\n\nBut yeah, it's it all needs purpose.\n\nCreativity needs purpose to exist and exist is really to fulfill its purpose, to have an outcome, intended outcome.\n\nHe continues in contrast to many artists, designers, never have 100% creative control over their work.\n\nSince there are too many people to please along the way, the art director, the copywriter, the client, the current trans, et cetera.\n\nThen there are portfolios completed to please the recruiters rather than showcase originality.\n\nAfter all, you ought to demonstrate that you are a quote, good fit, a good fit meaning, do exactly what everybody else does, only cheaper and faster.\n\nAnd I pause again and say, yet there are too many, he says too many people to please along the way.\n\nI rush towards that and embrace it and say, those are the people that are on board with this product.\n\nWhen you, you aren't, let's see, we'll back it up and say as the designer.\n\nYou aren't 100% in creative control over your work.\n\nThat's not the job.\n\nThe job is to shape the vision and the purpose and give it direction so that it achieves that outcome.\n\nIt's very, uh, we could say business oriented, but there are a lot of people involved.\n\nThe art director, the copyright of the client. Each one of these are people.\n\nThey're not static either.\n\nThey 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.\n\nIt's another design element.\n\nUm, The art director may have an arbitrary reason for saying something.\n\nThat's unfortunately, that's not purposeful, but for you, it becomes the purpose.\n\nSo the challenge is, how are you going to do the best work you can and still deliver that outcome.\n\nThat the challenge.\n\nYou can do it.\n\nIt is possible.\n\nAbsolutely.\n\nBut he's absolutely true about, um, you know, portfolios used to please recruiters and things like that that you're a good fit.\n\nAnd I would say the same thing about being a good fit.\n\nThis is the fundamental thing.\n\nWhat is true?\n\nAnd display that.\n\nWhat you do.\n\nWe talked about this in another episode of effortless.\n\nYou know, what is effortless to you?\n\nWell, do that, do that well.\n\nThe best you can do.\n\nThat's what you're presenting.\n\nPeople can take it or leave it.\n\nAnd that's the hard part when you see all these other things happening around you.\n\nAnd you just want to follow the trend.\n\nIt doesn't end well because that's not, that's not who you are.\n\nThat's not what you're doing.\n\nAnd he kind of says that.\n\nThis is great.\n\nHe continues.\n\nSo designers censor themselves, quote, this is far too wacky for my CD.\n\nQuote, the client will never take a risk with this, quote, this is not what they expect to see at the XYZ agency. Lets give them what they want.\n\nAnd then he says, then there's AI.\n\nThe one size fit all aesthetic, everyone, everybody in the corporate world is willing to die for.\n\nSo then he asks some questions.\n\nThese are great questions.\n\nHow are designers to retain good taste and judgment if good taste and judgment aren't rewarded anymore.\n\nHow is it possible not to give in to mediocrity?\n\nWe live in a world that favors speed, efficiency, conversion rates.\n\nThere's no place for error for wavering and experiment.\n\nAI does it for you now.\n\nQuote, designers with taste are needed, unquote.\n\nThat may be, but will anyone listen.\n\nSo he has the rhetorical question, but of course, I want to answer them.\n\nThat's There's got to be an answer.\n\nSo, what do you do?\n\nYeah, if it's not rewarded anymore.\n\nHow do you not give into mediocrity?\n\nYou know, I think the balance here is staying true to what you do.\n\nLike what is design?\n\nWhat does it mean to be refined?\n\nWhat does it mean to take the medium?\n\nAnd 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.\n\nThat's the talent.\n\nThe rest of what's swirling around with AI, not AI, there's a lot of discussion.\n\nThere's, there's a lot of artificial, artificial intelligence.\n\nThere's a lot of artificial promotion happening.\n\nThere's real things happening as well.\n\nAI does have a number of use cases that are practical.\n\nAnd yet at the same time, it's very tenuous.\n\nAnd so depending on your use case, It may not be where you need to put all the baskets.\n\nAnd I think I end up coming down on, we were made, we were created, where people were made in the image of God.\n\nHe was a creator.\n\nHe is a creator.\n\nHe's the creator.\n\nAnd so we have this ability to create.\n\nWe don't need to offload it to anything else.\n\nWe need to continue creating.\n\nAnd in doing so, We're collaborating.\n\nWe're working together, we're learning, we're encouraging, and we're producing a thing.\n\nAnd hopefully the thing you're producing is a helpful thing.\n\nIt helps another person do what they were made to do.\n\nThat's the top of the line.\n\nI think all of the other questions, all the other pressures, everything that's happening in the doom scrolling, if you keep going through that, it's not helpful.\n\nSo thank you, Thomas Cast, for that piece.\n\nYou can check out his link there.\n\nYou see thomascast.art.\n\nBut yeah, we're all facing this and create as creatives.\n\nSo what do you do about this taste?\n\nWell, I don't want to use the term because there's too much baggage in it now.\n\nAnd besides, I don't think stakeholders know what you mean by it.\n\nIf you're going to use taste, I have taste.\n\nDoes the time design team have taste?\n\nYeah, you can't measure it.\n\nIt's one of those things.\n\nIt sounds great.\n\nBut let's talk in terms of purpose, clarity, refinement. Right?\n\nThese are tangible criteria you can relate to and they're actionable.\n\nThey can be actionable.\n\nYou can't just have taste, right?\n\nIt's not, yeah, an even purpose and clarity and refinement.\n\nThose things are great, but they don't stand alone.\n\nYou need process.\n\nAnd when you're presented with a design, do you know how to look at it, right?\n\nThat's kind of the challenge.\n\nCan you decompose it as to why it works?\n\nI mean, AI is going to present you with a design.\n\nCan you understand it?\n\nCan you decompose it?\n\nCan you assess the merits of it?\n\nOf its effectiveness because of what was done with it?\n\nAnd for product design, can you explain why every element on the screen is there?\n\nCan you explain the job that those elements are doing?\n\nAnd what happens to the outcome if those elements are absent?\n\nSo many times I've seen designers put a key line, you know, to separate elements or borders on things or a drop shadow.\n\nIt's like, why is that there?\n\nIt's not arbitrary, it does a thing.\n\nIt's a very useful tool, all of those things.\n\nUsed in the wrong way, right?\n\nUsed in an ineffective way, it's not refined.\n\nBut 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.\n\nBe that person.\n\nAnd I can help too.\n\nI've produced a masterclass that is called designed for value.\n\nAnd I go through the design process I've developed over the years.\n\nWe'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.\n\nThese are hand in hand types of things.\n\nIt's not an isolated, like learn this skill, how to make screens or learn this leadership skill.\n\nNo, it's intertwined.\n\nYou do it every day.\n\nAnd you may be doing it by accident?\n\nWell, I want to help you do it on purpose.\n\nSo you can check that out at designing Academy.\n\nSpecifically it's academy.designy.com\n\nWell, thanks for listening to the Daily Sprint.\n\nPlease follow, subscribe on whatever platform that you're listening to right now.\n\nI would love to have you as a guest on the Daily Sprint.\n\nYou can go to designy.com and a button on the bottom of the screen on every page.\n\nThere's an application to become a guest.\n\nI'd love to hear what you have to say about taste.\n\nAwesome.\n\nAnd in any case, go to designy.com.\n\nSign up for the free newsletter. Follow all these discussions and more.\n\nIt's designy.com.\n\nThanks for listening to The Daily Sprint.\n\nRemember, today is a great day to design with a why.\n\nSee you later.",
  "title": "More Than Taste",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-18T13:11:52.007Z"
}