On subjectivity, gatekeeping, and the risk of leaving design industry terms like taste undefined.
Taste Is All That's Left | Blog
On what is left to do once the machine can make anything, and why taste is the last craft worth keeping.
On Taste, Effort & Curiosity - again
When AI collapses how long it takes to ship, what’s left is judgment, experimentation, and knowing what not to build.
The Ratchet: How Preference Standards Erase What They Can't Express - Astral's Blog
Metacognitive experiences as information: Processing fluency in consumer judgment and decision making
Abstract Thinking is accompanied by metacognitive experiences of ease or difficulty. People draw on these experiences as a source of information that can complement or challenge the implications of declarative information. We conceptualize the operation of metacognitive experiences within the framework of feelings‐as‐information theory and review their implications for judgments relevant to consumer behavior, including popularity, trust, risk, truth, and beauty.
Metacognitive experiences as information: Processing fluency in consumer judgment and decision making
Abstract Thinking is accompanied by metacognitive experiences of ease or difficulty. People draw on these experiences as a source of information that can complement or challenge the implications of declarative information. We conceptualize the operation of metacognitive experiences within the framework of feelings‐as‐information theory and review their implications for judgments relevant to consumer behavior, including popularity, trust, risk, truth, and beauty.
Measuring the Hedonic and Utilitarian Dimensions of Consumer Attitude
This article reports the development and validation of a parsimonious, generalizable scale that measures the hedonic and utilitarian dimensions of consumer attitudes toward product categories and different brands within categories. The hedonic/utilitarian (HED/UT) scale includes ten semantic differential response items, five of which refer to the hedonic dimension and five of which refer to the utilitarian dimension of consumer attitudes. The authors conducted six studies to establish the unidimensionality, reliability, and validity of the two HED/UT subscales. In reaching the final scale, the authors also develop and implement a unique process of paring down a psychometrically sound but otherwise too large set of items. Nomological validity is established by replacing a typical, one-dimensional attitude toward the brand measure with the hedonic and utilitarian dimensions in a central route processing model. Results suggest that the hedonic and utilitarian constructs are two distinct dimensions of brand attitude and are reliably and validly measured by the HED/UT scale.
A Superficial Aesthetic of Moderation
Overvaluing the appearance of moderation can be a mistake, in that it can give undue credence to assertions that go unsubstantiated.
Evolving Design Language in the AI Era: From Good to Great
Explore how the AI era reshapes design language, emphasizing objective critique over subjective opinions for successful outcomes.
The Four Big Risks | Silicon Valley Product Group
In the first edition of my book, INSPIRED, I discussed how successful products are valuable, usable and feasible, where I defined “valuable” as both valuable to customers and valuable to your business. While it’s easy to remember these three attributes, over the years I’ve come to believe that it was obscuring some pretty serious risks and...
Good Taste the Only Real Moat Left
AI makes competent output cheap. That makes taste more valuable, but also more incomplete. The real edge comes from pairing judgment with context, stakes, and the willingness to build.
Study Finds Consumers Are Actively Turned Off by Products That Use AI
Researchers have found that including the words "artificial intelligence" in product marketing is a major turn-off for consumers.
Good Taste — ADVICE TO WRITERS
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But you
the new product designer (and why we’re getting it wrong)
Michael Baym on Twitter / X
Remember that you, by definition, cannot distinguish between a good idea and a failure of your own knowledge, judgement, or taste. This is why external (ideally expert) feedback is crucial— Michael Baym (@baym) March 25, 2026
I do think this is a kind of novel problem with our current media environment - Serious people aren't good at making content, they have other things to do, but content is what drives attention. Tastemakers used to highlight the serious people but they're gone, replaced by content creators.
