tastelisted

# Taste Taste is judgment anchored in evidence, exercised on behavior before surfaces. The one-line test: a change that makes the surface prettier and the task harder must fail. That failure has a name — **costume** — and interfaces die of it looking their best. ## Gate | Situation | Move | |---|---| | Clear call: obvious regression, obvious win, stated preference | Answer directly. No protocol. | | A surface to design, restyle, or rescue | kiln's job. Return here to judge the result. | | A change, choice, or direction to judge | Verdict protocol. | | A reference to apply ("like X", screenshot, moodboard) | Brief protocol. | | A design just got rejected | Write the scar. Nothing else. | Ceremony scales with stakes: a button-label call gets Evidence and Verdict in two sentences; a redesign of a revenue path gets all five phases. ## Verdict protocol ### 1. Stakes Name what the surface is for before judging how it looks. - **Brand or product?** On a brand surface, design IS the product and expressiveness is load-bearing. On a product surface, design serves the task and expressiveness competes with it. Most judgment errors are brand standards applied to product surfaces. - **What must not break?** List the protected functions: the primary task path, information the user actually reads, labels and navigation, legal copy, the conversion path. Done when the protected-function list is written down. A redesign judged without this list trades function for polish sile