You Never Stop Cultivating Taste | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)
Mastery is not just learning tools or techniques; it is developing a distinctive point of view through repeated practice and intentional choices. Figma’s Loredana Crisan argues that “taste” is cultivated continuously through care for one’s craft, empathy for users, and disciplined attention to detail. AI can expand creative exploration, but it cannot replace the judgment that makes work personal and meaningful. ## Taste Is Built Through Practice - Expertise requires understanding both the material and the tools of a craft. - Crisan compares design to piano and music composition: technical correctness matters less than knowing why choices create emotion and impact. - Taste develops through: - Consistent practice - Mentorship and critique - Feedback and collaboration - Sustained creative attention - Developing a point of view is the most time-consuming part of mastery—and it never truly ends. ## Taste Is a Form of Care - Taste is visible when work feels intentional, refined, and thoughtfully executed. - Dieter Rams’ Braun products demonstrate this principle by considering not only an object’s function but also its surroundings, physical interactions, and overall experience. - Taste is not universal popularity; different designers can have different sensibilities while showing equal intentionality. - In product design, taste appears in trade-offs such as: - Form versus function - Expressiveness versus legibility - What to include versus what to omit - Which compromises to accept or reject - Taste comes from both love of the craft and care for the people using the result. - Designers should test details across varied contexts, including screen sizes, color profiles, languages, devices, transitions, and uncommon user states. ## What Designers With Taste Demonstrate When hiring for taste, Crisan looks for three qualities: - **Discernment:** The ability to identify what is not working and explain why with nuance. - **Empathy:** Attention to the person experiencing the interface, including needs that may not be obvious. - **Creative energy:** A persistent drive to make, experiment, and pursue side projects or unresolved problems. ## AI Expands Exploration but Cannot Replace Judgment - AI may reduce the labor involved in producing work, but accepting its first output would undermine the iterative process required for quality. - Examples such as James Dyson’s 5,127 prototypes illustrate how refinement and rejection are central to creative mastery. - Better tools increase the distance a creator can travel between an idea and its execution, but the vision still comes from the creator. - AI can help generate more possibilities, while taste determines which possibilities are worth developing. - A creator’s distinctive voice emerges from accumulated, intentional decisions repeated over time. The practical recommendation is to use AI and other tools to explore broadly, while continuing to practice, critique, refine, and care deeply about both the craft and the people who experience the final result.