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Comment by mhartl | Hacker News Reader

Given there is no such thing as "poor taste"

You might be interested in the contrary view, expressed by Paul Graham in "Taste for Makers" [1]:

Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things.

Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html

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I'm sorry you are being downvoted for merely quoting PG. The article is from 2002; I wonder if he still believes what he wrote? In any case, PG is almost certainly in the wrong.

> Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes.

Sure, but that's not why practically everyone in academic music/art say it, or refuse to make value judgments about art.

> You feel this when you start to design things.

My experience has been exactly the opposite - I have a degree in music though I work as a programmer.

> Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings.

Both of which have well defined, internal metrics (higher numbers are better).

> It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job.

It may be for some people for some jobs, but this does not relate to generalizing personal taste to universal truth in any way.

> But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job.

It does not follow that iff beauty is in the eye of the beholder then designers can not improve. Cultures share values. Improving design (in a professional setting) is something closer to optimizing in the eyes of the target market... to click a button. Of course, the solution space is both practically infinite and time dependent. Neither beauty nor taste need be intrinsic or universal, we just need to agree upon a shared language (social convention).

I'm sorry you are being downvoted for merely quoting PG.

I know, right? And I'm not even endorsing PG's view! Just putting it out there for discussion.

> But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job

Sounds like nonsense to me. Design, to my mind, is less about "beauty" than it is about communication. Achieving beauty is the goal of the artist, but the designer is trying to achieve something much more concrete : helping the user understand your product.

Thus, it follows that design can to a degree be assessed & measured. If your users understand your product and how to use it, then it's probably competently designed. If they have no idea WTF is going on, then probably not.

Note that there is no mention in that article about what the users and/or customers of whatever you're designing might like.

You may not be able to measure beauty, but you can ask your users/customers if they like your design.

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