How to Develop Taste as a Product Manager

How does one develop taste in product management?

The obvious analogy here is food.

Like most kids, I loved chocolate.

But then my dad handed me a piece of 86% dark chocolate, and I was not ready for that level of intensity.

At the time, I thought it was terrible. Years later, though, I refined my palate, and now I love it.

Taste evolves.

And in product management, it’s no different.

Markets change, customer expectations shift, and what was once cutting-edge might now seem stale.

That’s why developing taste isn’t a one-and-done process—it’s an ongoing practice.

Let’s discuss some approaches to refining your taste continuously, so you can stay ahead and build exceptional products.

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1. Start by Tasting the Bad

The best way to refine your sense of taste is to experience what bad looks and feels like firsthand. Here’s how you can approach this methodically:

• Deep Dive Into Flawed Experiences
  Find products that receive consistently poor reviews—look at app stores, G2, or other review platforms. Use these products as your sandbox. Interact with them in detail: complete tasks, try to navigate features, and experience the friction points users complain about.

• Catalog the Pain Points
  Create a “bad taste” journal to document the frustrations you encounter. Did a button lead nowhere? Did the navigation confuse you? Write down specific scenarios. Over time, this library becomes a resource for recognizing similar pitfalls in your product.

• Deconstruct the Root Cause
  Take it a step further by analyzing why the bad elements feel so jarring. Is it the lack of visual hierarchy? Poor feedback mechanisms? Misaligned expectations? This exercise helps you recognize the small details that create big frustrations.

• Incorporate Learnings Into Your Workflow
  As you design or evaluate your product, revisit this mental (or physical) list. If you notice a similar annoyance creeping into your product, you’ll have the experience to identify and eliminate it before it becomes a problem for your users.

The key here isn’t just to notice bad taste but to train your instincts to reject it when you see it—whether in your own work or your co-creators’.

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2. Broaden Your Horizons Beyond Your Vertical

Taste isn’t just relative to what exists in your industry—it’s shaped by great experiences across other domains. Top product managers expand their horizons to learn from the best experiences, wherever they are.

• Study the Best Across Industries
  If you’re working in e-commerce, don’t limit your exploration to other e-commerce platforms. Instead, explore industries like hospitality, fintech, or social media, where customer interactions and flows might spark ideas.

  Ask yourself: What about their design, flow, or functionality delights users?

• Reverse Engineer Excellence
  When you find a product that leaves you impressed, break it down. Why did you feel that way? Is it the speed of response? The seamless integration of a feature?

  Document these insights so you can recreate similar experiences in your product.

• Borrow Without Boundaries
  Innovation often comes from cross-pollination of ideas. For instance, Facebook’s “reaction” feature is a user interaction model that could inspire new approaches to in-app engagement across industries.

  Ask yourself how these ideas can be adapted to your vertical.

• Engage as a Customer
  Don’t just study; actively use these products. Feel the joy of seamless booking on Airbnb, the precision of Spotify’s playlists, or the ease of Amazon’s checkout.

  By experiencing these as a customer, you internalize what “good” feels like, creating a benchmark for your own work.

Go broad with your exposure so you can build a mental (or physical) portfolio of high-quality experiences, equipping you to incorporate those elements into your product.

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3. Embrace the E3 Framework: Envision, Empower, Elevate

The E3 Framework—Envision, Empower, Elevate—isn't just a guide for delivering products. It's a foundation for sharpening your focus on quality by reducing cognitive load and fostering clarity. Here’s how:

• Structure Frees You to Focus on Quality
  With a clear agreement on what inputs, outputs, and outcomes your team will produce at each phase, you remove ambiguity from the process.

  This means fewer mental calories are spent figuring out how to package information, freeing you to concentrate on the nuances of the product experience.

• Consistency Breeds Excellence
  Taste thrives when there’s a baseline of consistency. By structuring your process with the E3 Framework, you ensure that all stakeholders understand what to expect and deliver.

  This allows you to dive deeper into the quality of what you’re creating rather than constantly reinventing the wheel for each project or team.

• Feedback Loops Hone Taste Over Time
  The Elevate phase relies on cycles of feedback, both qualitative and quantitative. This iterative process is the ultimate training ground for refining taste.

  You’re not only building better products but also training your intuition for what customers value most—an invaluable skill for future projects.

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Becoming a tastemaker isn’t an overnight process—it’s a journey of intrinsic curiosity and self-improvement.

Spend time with the bad to sharpen your instincts for quality, and immerse yourself in great experiences across industries to broaden your perspective.

If you’re ready to dive deeper into frameworks, actionable steps, and how to craft vision, strategy, and roadmaps, grab your copy of the Product Protégé Guide on Amazon. It’s a playbook for product managers who aim to have a locked in process in order to have the time to develop taste!

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