In product design, there’s always been a quiet force shaping everything from the curve of an icon to the tone of a push notification. We don’t talk about it much. We don’t A/B test it. But we feel it. It’s called taste.
Now that AI is everywhere in the design process, from writing copy and generating flows to suggesting layouts, taste is more important than ever. It’s what keeps the work human. It’s what separates products that feel assembled from ones that feel intentional.
AI can now generate infinite output. But not everything that works should ship. Not everything that performs should live. Taste tells you what’s worth keeping. It helps you see what matters before anyone else can put words to it.
That’s why, in the age of AI, the value designers bring is shifting. Ivan, founder of Notion, puts it simply: what remains is a mix of capability, agency, and taste.
Capability is your skillset. Designing interfaces, writing copy, building prototypes. AI is getting good at helping here.
Agency is your drive. The ability to push through ambiguity, make decisions, and ship work.
Taste is what determines which direction you push. It’s your compass. It tells you where to go, what feels right, and what to leave behind. Without it, the work may be functional, but it won’t feel alive.
Taste is the quiet instinct that says this is off when a margin feels wrong. It’s the part of you that changes a word because the tone doesn’t quite fit or removes a step in a flow that technically works but just feels tired.
In AI-first design, your job isn’t just to prompt and pick. It’s to guide. To shape. To curate. The best experiences aren’t just fast or functional. They’re coherent. Expressive. Alive. That coherence doesn’t come from the model; it comes from you.
Taste becomes your filtering system. It’s how you decide when to intervene and when to let the machine run. It’s an internal compass for quality. It tells you when to keep pushing and when to say this is done. It lets you spot inconsistency before it becomes friction. And in a world where anyone can ship something that looks decent, the difference is how it feels.
Because software makes you feel a certain way when it’s working well. And even if the customer doesn’t notice each detail, they can feel their collective presence.
But taste isn’t just about refinement. It’s about conviction. About being willing to take risks, to try something that hasn’t been done before. Look at Apple’s new iOS 26 glass aesthetic. It’s not just visual polish. It’s a statement that the platform can evolve. That the interface can feel fluid, alive, and grounded in something new. No prompt would have surfaced it. No metric would have demanded it. It came from a team with a point of view.
Taste is what gives a product personality. And often, that personality is what makes people care. Taste is also holistic. It’s not just how something looks, but how it feels, sounds, moves, and behaves. It shows up in micro-details like spacing and motion, but also in macro decisions like whether a feature should even exist. Visual craft, experience flow, tone of voice, structure, and performance all carry taste.
It’s not innate. Taste is cultivated. You develop it by studying great work. By making things, over and over again. By building with people who set a high bar. By holding yourself to that same bar and refusing to compromise.
Taste compounds. The more you care, the more your instincts sharpen. The more you practice, the more naturally it shows up in the work. But it only sticks if leadership shows it matters. Taste starts at the top. Not by hiring great designers, but by modeling great decisions. By sweating the details in reviews. By refusing to let speed or scale water down the craft. If quality isn’t protected, it disappears fast and it’s hard to get back.
AI is changing how we design. Faster prototyping, faster iteration, faster production. But speed without sensitivity leads to sameness. A thousand outputs, all technically correct, none emotionally resonant. The best designers will use AI to amplify their taste, not replace it. To explore more deeply. To polish faster. To obsess over details with more time, not less.
In the age of AI-driven design, taste isn’t just polish. It’s strategy. It’s how you make something worth remembering. Worth choosing. Worth loving.
Because when everything is possible, taste is what makes it personal. It’s what turns raw potential into real products. Into work that resonates. Into software that feels not just made but meant.