Everyone has taste

You don't need to be a designer to have taste. Not everyone knows how to make something look or work well, but everyone knows how to feel whether it does. That judgment is instinctive, almost subconscious. You walk into a room, you pick up an object, you use an app, and something just doesn't sit right. You can't explain it, you can't point to a specific reason, but you feel it immediately.

The hotel room

Think about the last time you stayed in a hotel and spent five minutes wandering around in the dark, hitting every wall switch just to turn the lights off before bed. You didn't think "this is a design failure." You just felt the friction, got mildly frustrated, and eventually got into bed slightly more annoyed than you needed to be.

Now think about the hotels where there's a single switch right next to where you sleep. One tap and everything goes dark. You don't notice it in the same way, but you feel it, and it leaves a completely different impression. That difference didn't cost more money. It just required someone to care enough to think about it (though to be fair that person usually cost you more money XD).

What this means

That's taste. Not a skill nor a profession, just a very human ability to sense when something was thought about and when it wasn't. Everyone has it, even people who have never considered design a day in their life.

And that quiet feeling people carry with them afterwards is what makes me fall in love with design.

Image credit: Dowsing & Reynolds