Taste is trained
Taste is a skill, and it takes reps. Mine came from breaking designer's block by looking at other people's work more carefully than they expected anyone to.
Whenever I start a design the blocker is inspiration, so I go and use well-designed apps and websites and pay attention to the interactions most people never notice: what a control does on the second press, what the empty state says, how long the sheet takes to close. Then I ask how I would make it more intuitive, more memorable, or simply different.
When someone asks me how to get good at UI I break it into modules – type, spacing, colour, motion, the rest – and say: pick one, look at fifty examples of it done well, measure ten of them, ship one. Sparring on ideas with the team or with end users does the rest. Perspective, deliberately borrowed, is the thing that has helped me most.
- Look at the thing at its real size on a real device
- Read the numbers behind what you admire; taste without measurement is preference
- Keep the rejected direction; it teaches more than the one that shipped