Taste Is Not the Skill
I keep hearing the word taste thrown around as the most important design skill in the age of AI, and I couldn't disagree more.
What tastes good to me might taste terrible to you. Taste is subjective.
Taste is a word that gets used to gatekeep. It dresses up class and culture as discernment. It makes exclusion sound like expertise. Whose taste are we talking about? Trained by who? Validated where?
What actually matters is conviction and discernment. A well-articulated point of view. Knowing what you will not make and when you should say no.
When I look at most AI design output, the problem is not that the taste is bad. The problem is that no one said no. Nothing was decided or refused. It is the average of everything, which is the same as nothing.
The designers I learn from are not the ones with the most refined eye or the most taste. They are the ones who can tell me, plainly, what they will not do and why. That is not simply taste. That is a stance, backbone, and experience. And it shows up in our work whether anyone calls it beautiful or not.
An AI model cannot give you a lived experience or discernment. Those skills are uniquely human.