--- date: 2026-01-13 title: Product taste description: What is product taste and why does it matter? status: published words: 814 --- *Product taste* seems to be all the rage these days. As software becomes easier to build, differentiation is shifting from technology to softer aspects of product development, like taste. But what does great product taste even entail? Some take the simplistic view that product taste is just equal to design. But the modernist architect and designer, Louis Sullivan, wouldn't agree. He famously said, ["form follows function"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_follows_function), design should be downstream of functionality. In my view, taste encompasses design, it's its superset. Others compare it with being opinionated, but that feels more like a necessary rather than a sufficient condition. You can be highly opinionated and at the same time fail to resonate with a wider audience. In that sense, taste is something more inter-subjective than subjective. It is like a clustering region of many individuals in some sort of high-dimensional space of preferences. For food, it's how the chemicals on your tongue create subjective experience. For products in general, it's how the product and its user experience relate to the user's pre-conceived mental models of the world. When people talk about product taste, they talk about something inter-subjective. It's maybe possible to cultivate taste for something that only you like (Lady Gaga's meat dress comes to mind). But the whole idea of product taste is that your taste will resonate with others' taste. Have a look at these, which one do you think represents the artist's actual layout, and which one is made up: A or B? ![A Mondrian composition next to an altered copy](/images/taste-mondrian.png) ![A Malevich composition next to an altered copy](/images/taste-malevich.png) In both, A is the real one. The top pair is after Piet Mondrian's *Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow* (1930). The bottom pair is after Kazimir Malevich's *Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying* (1915). Words similar to "taste" have already been floating around in the product community, like *product intuition* or *product sense*. All these words hint at the idea that taste is something that cannot be taught - it has to be developed through experiences. Just as the way to develop taste in music is to listen to a lot of music, to develop a product taste, you need to try out a lot of products. But experiences alone won't endow you with taste, there also has to be a sensitivity attuned to those experiences. In fact, [some thinkers argue](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9593004-a-new-formula-for-acquiring-ethical-knowledge-appeared-knowledge), the way to think about knowledge is: > knowledge = experience x sensitivity Sensitivity is about not taking things for granted. It's easy to learn nothing from a masterpiece—just don't ask “why?”. Why does this work? Why does it feel this way? What would change if this detail were different? In those questions lies how the parts contribute to the whole, whether that's through function, feeling or meaning. ### Building products with taste Needless to say, building a great product always starts with answering "*who* is the user?". One thing is certain, products that start to blur on target users are surely lost. The user always lives in some context: problems to be solved (or [Jobs-to-Be-Done](https://www.christenseninstitute.org/theory/jobs-to-be-done/)), current workflows and habits, incentive structures, etc. Understanding and having deep empathy for the user is a necessary precondition to developing taste for a specific product category. With the target user pinned down (the *who*), one should answer the *what*, *how* and *why*: - **What**: What is the core functionality and focus of your product? What are the boundaries? What is in- and out-of-scope? This is about deliberately and narrowly channeling user attention, having the judgment to make trade-offs, and providing clarity of purpose. - **How**: How do you make the user feel when using the product? Are there patterns and mental models that your user will recognise? This is about the design and cohesion of your product and the emotion and delight it brings to the user. - **Why**: A great product is more than just its inputs and outputs. It's about having a great vision and raison d'être. It's how you empower the users to become a better version of themselves. Using the best products feels like being on a journey. Together, these form a pyramid of product value: usefulness, emotion and meaning. Taste is expressed at every level—in choosing what the product does, shaping how it feels, and understanding why it matters. In other words, the first step is about usefulness, the second about emotion and the third about meaningfulness. This hierarchy might feel familiar? It mirrors Mr. Maslow's hierarchy of needs and forms a "hierarchy of taste" that could be infused at every product level[^hierarcy]. [^hierarcy]: Pretty similar to Bain and Company's [hierarchy (or elements) of value](https://media.bain.com/elements-of-value/#). ### Cultivate your taste As software becomes cheaper and faster to build, deciding what deserves to be built matters more. Taste guides those decisions: what a product does, how it feels, and why it matters. Develop it by trying things, hacking on stuff, paying attention and asking why. That's how you build your taste, step by step. You don’t need Rick Rubin’s beard. A little of his confidence in taste would help, though. rgOPHBLj6VA