makes me think of “product sense” a term that gets thrown around often these days. there’s always an effort to rationalize and formalize emerging insights, but these ephemeral qualities are more nuanced and don’t fit deterministic methods, I think we should leave it at “taste” which captures the artistic and cultural expressions that traditional business language can’t fully convey, reflecting the deep-rooted and intuitive aspects essential for product dev
I agree with you, especially for new startups. Last week, I asked a Principal from a VC about this topic, and he told me that he balances taste with whether the startup is solving a pain for users that no one else is addressing. If that is true, they still overlook the taste.
Really thought provoking read! Made me think about how this translates in industries like healthcare where the user experience tends to be pretty horrible across the board. Will taste eat software when software is still trying to eat the world in healthcare? Will taste be a huge differentiator that will drive adoption even in the face of legacy tools that have major distribution advantage?
Great questions, i’d suggest it looks like a cycle in each industry, where legacy players with large moats don’t have to adapt as fast to the current point in the cycle but any new players do. Each industry has its own unique dynamics that would make this cycle progress at a different rate.
Great piece. In the end, it's all a user experience. Whether it's crafting a dish, decorating a room, or designing software.. they all involve emotional experiences.
Taste is a lot about judgment first—the underlying awareness of what taste means. Linear's success and their experience shows their impeccable judgment which gradually develops into the taste. This is why product judgment is so important—something Paul Adams wrote in the Intercom blog few years ago.
This was merely a general reference to product judgment that we know—I guess there is a deep interdependence in this judgment and the product taste that you mentioned.
This trend is clearly happening with more in-house teams moving into tech companies.
Brand design is about turning a utility into an experience. Rosetta Stone is a utility; Duolingo is an experience. Most companies now want the latter because it's opinionated, it's delightful, it has a point of view, and most of all it's fun to use. Overall, it'll be good for business, too.
This is a huge challenge as many brand agencies don't understand product, many product teams don't understand — or genuinely dislike — brand designers. The strongest companies like a Linear have both.
I always said: product is merit; brand is distribution. But a slight remix here might be: Product is merit. Brand is taste. Taste is distribution.
This resonates. Christopher Alexander in his 'The Timeless Way of Building' described the 'Quality Without a Name', which is quite reminiscent of what you call taste here. That feeling when something was meant to be, that feels inevitable.
What's fascinating is that this quality doesn't come from better aesthetic judgment. The products we love most didn't have taste applied. They grew from a different process. That's the part that changes everything.
Excelent post! Never thought of this: ‘Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.’ but it makes a lot of sense as I started to build some taste myself.
The concept is best understood by the creative folks.
It is not about the utility of a song but how it makes you feel or how humming a certain tune changes your mood.
Same with apparel designers who need to decide when to hold back. Just because they can add as much fabric and embellishments as they like does not mean they should. Grace and elegance is about taste.
Same with fiction writers who transport you to their world with their writing and more importantly editing skills.
I believe the future belongs to people operating at the intersection of behavioural psychology and design. Business world looks down upon the touchy feely but designing for emotions is the future.
I don’t know if I’d use the term “Taste”, I might say user experience. It’s certainly not enough anymore to solve important customer problem and be first to market. Poor taste, ugly, hard to use products can be unseated by good taste ones, look at the focus-destroyer named Slack, or the commoditization of Gen-AI.
> A fifth of all open product manager job listings are based in the Bay Area. The share has increased 25% over the past two years (from 15% to over 20%) and is still growing.
Writing code has always been relatively cheap. Maintaining and scaling a system through growth (if you're lucky enough to get it) is the hard part.
I'm a big fan of product thinking/taste and I think you're right that there's a shift. But also VCs have seen enough startups fail after a round or two to prevent this being a paradigm shift.
makes me think of “product sense” a term that gets thrown around often these days. there’s always an effort to rationalize and formalize emerging insights, but these ephemeral qualities are more nuanced and don’t fit deterministic methods, I think we should leave it at “taste” which captures the artistic and cultural expressions that traditional business language can’t fully convey, reflecting the deep-rooted and intuitive aspects essential for product dev
Narayan, whether it be taste or sense, your point about the more ephemeral, non-deterministic qualities being discussed here really resonates.
For product sense specifically, I think its actually quite useful to perceive it similar in spirit to our other (real) senses: https://waqaswrites.substack.com/p/the-sense-behind-product-sense?r=jhccc
This was a great read and extremely relevant for the times.
Taste is something that almost all knowledge workers will have to develop and curation will also become a super power.
I agree with you, especially for new startups. Last week, I asked a Principal from a VC about this topic, and he told me that he balances taste with whether the startup is solving a pain for users that no one else is addressing. If that is true, they still overlook the taste.
Really thought provoking read! Made me think about how this translates in industries like healthcare where the user experience tends to be pretty horrible across the board. Will taste eat software when software is still trying to eat the world in healthcare? Will taste be a huge differentiator that will drive adoption even in the face of legacy tools that have major distribution advantage?
Great questions, i’d suggest it looks like a cycle in each industry, where legacy players with large moats don’t have to adapt as fast to the current point in the cycle but any new players do. Each industry has its own unique dynamics that would make this cycle progress at a different rate.
Great piece. In the end, it's all a user experience. Whether it's crafting a dish, decorating a room, or designing software.. they all involve emotional experiences.
agreed
A beautiful post.
Taste is a lot about judgment first—the underlying awareness of what taste means. Linear's success and their experience shows their impeccable judgment which gradually develops into the taste. This is why product judgment is so important—something Paul Adams wrote in the Intercom blog few years ago.
Will look that up!
Here is Paul's post: https://www.intercom.com/blog/product-judgment/
This was merely a general reference to product judgment that we know—I guess there is a deep interdependence in this judgment and the product taste that you mentioned.
This was great!!
🫶
Really interesting point but brings up questions regarding your definition of "taste".
when we can’t explain it with math it feels hard to define!
No October essays?
many drafts, out 🔜
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Really great post.
This trend is clearly happening with more in-house teams moving into tech companies.
Brand design is about turning a utility into an experience. Rosetta Stone is a utility; Duolingo is an experience. Most companies now want the latter because it's opinionated, it's delightful, it has a point of view, and most of all it's fun to use. Overall, it'll be good for business, too.
This is a huge challenge as many brand agencies don't understand product, many product teams don't understand — or genuinely dislike — brand designers. The strongest companies like a Linear have both.
I always said: product is merit; brand is distribution. But a slight remix here might be: Product is merit. Brand is taste. Taste is distribution.
This resonates. Christopher Alexander in his 'The Timeless Way of Building' described the 'Quality Without a Name', which is quite reminiscent of what you call taste here. That feeling when something was meant to be, that feels inevitable.
What's fascinating is that this quality doesn't come from better aesthetic judgment. The products we love most didn't have taste applied. They grew from a different process. That's the part that changes everything.
Excelent post! Never thought of this: ‘Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.’ but it makes a lot of sense as I started to build some taste myself.
🙏
The concept is best understood by the creative folks.
It is not about the utility of a song but how it makes you feel or how humming a certain tune changes your mood.
Same with apparel designers who need to decide when to hold back. Just because they can add as much fabric and embellishments as they like does not mean they should. Grace and elegance is about taste.
Same with fiction writers who transport you to their world with their writing and more importantly editing skills.
I believe the future belongs to people operating at the intersection of behavioural psychology and design. Business world looks down upon the touchy feely but designing for emotions is the future.
I don’t know if I’d use the term “Taste”, I might say user experience. It’s certainly not enough anymore to solve important customer problem and be first to market. Poor taste, ugly, hard to use products can be unseated by good taste ones, look at the focus-destroyer named Slack, or the commoditization of Gen-AI.
> A fifth of all open product manager job listings are based in the Bay Area. The share has increased 25% over the past two years (from 15% to over 20%) and is still growing.
https://x.com/lennysan/status/1839721913041752368?s=46&t=MxjKGZ0xcO_edQX0W4Soig
Writing code has always been relatively cheap. Maintaining and scaling a system through growth (if you're lucky enough to get it) is the hard part.
I'm a big fan of product thinking/taste and I think you're right that there's a shift. But also VCs have seen enough startups fail after a round or two to prevent this being a paradigm shift.