Developing taste
Emil Kowalski opens Developing Taste with a car. Nobody cared about the first one’s colour or silhouette, because the competition was a horse; now that cars are commoditised, details matter more than ever. Software is at the same point: shipping something that works is no longer a differentiator, “especially now with AI.” He borrows Anu Atluru’s line: “In a world of scarcity, we treasure tools. In a world of abundance, we treasure taste.”
Three ways to train it#
Taste, in Emil’s definition, is commonly mistaken for personal preference but is a trained instinct, “the ability to see beyond the obvious and recognize what elevates.” If it is trained, the question is how, and his essay gives three answers.
The first is exposure: a designer should look at great designs, a writer should read great books, and Steve Jobs is quoted on trying “to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done.” The practical version, credited to Julie Zhuo’s On taste, part 3, is to find people respected in their field, see who they admire, and build a curated list of tastemakers to surround yourself with.
The second is analysis, with a rule: while calibrating your taste, do not label things good or bad. Rationalise why something feels great instead of trusting the gut. Study apps rather than use them, asking why an interaction feels good, as Brian Lovin’s App Dissection does; a filmmaker should ask why the director made each choice. “Go beyond the surface level. Be curious.”
The third is practice. Create things and seek feedback, because good critique from the right person beats trial and error; with time you become a tastemaker, as well as a judge. Your early work probably will not be good, “but that’s a good sign”: your taste can already tell the work is not on par. That distance is the taste gap, footnoted to Ira Glass. The phase is normal. Do not quit.
The why is the work#
Rauno Freiberg arrives from the other direction. The closing thoughts of Invisible Details of Interaction Design admit that articulating why something feels right comes less naturally to him than making it feel right, but they are two sides of one coin: “There must be a reason. It can be as simple as a particular spring curve or something more innate, like metaphors.” Analysing details beyond “it feels nice” nurtures taste; so, he says earlier, does recreating interfaces.
Paco Coursey wrote from inside the gap. In Creative Output (2019) he is consistently unhappy with his output, not good at designing from scratch despite the title, and everything he makes feels like a remix. He quotes Mark Dalgleish: developers who find design hard are skipping the inspiration phase of looking at other designs and taking the good ideas.
Two months later, in Good Writers, he pulls apart an opening sentence that glued him to an article: “I’m learning to recognize good writing.” His Write it down policy, every idea, every time, is the low-tech end of the same habit.
What to schedule#
Keep a list of people whose work you trust and look at it on purpose. When something feels good, write one sentence about why. Show what you make to someone whose critique you respect, and when it is worse than what you admired, read that as your judgement being ahead of your hands, which is the order you want.