taste only gets you so far if you want real human beings to use what you make

yes but I acutally think taste makes the difference by taking customers the extra mile

yes, and you can't have one without the other. if you don't look at metrics and you don't know how a design is performing, you are stagnating as a designer and failing to give your users a geat experience. that doesn't mean you have to live or die by metrics, but they help a lot