Of Quality

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“There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named.” - Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building

This means Quality is not just the result of a collision between subject and object. The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Quality! – Robert Pirsig, The Zen of Motorcycle Maintentance

“Quality” is a word we throw around confidently, but it’s tough to say exactly what we mean by it.

We all have a subjective sense of quality. When buying groceries, we hunt for the apple without a bruise. When we purchase a car, we may seek one built to last or, for those inclined, built for speed and torque. The paintings you put on your wall, the jeans you bought online, the software you choose to use, the home you signed the mortgage for – all of these are based on a subjective sense of quality, one as equally based on emotion as logic.

But how do we determine quality? Is there a shared, objective perception of quality? Can we rely on metrics and analysis to define it, or is it always filtered through our own personal lens?”

As a design leader at a software company, I’m tasked with making sure our product meets a high-quality standard. But how do you define that standard? Is there a universal measure of quality for our diverse customer base? Or across different products and experiences?

You might suggest ‘accessibility’—designing the product to accommodate a variety of needs and preferences — which undoubtedly contributes to the perception of quality. But even the most accessible website could still crash your computer or steal your credit card info. And then there’s the emotional aspect of quality: how do we create a product that users don’t just use, but come to love?

In this newsletter, I will explore the nature of quality across multiple dimensions – product design, consumer choice, life choices, art, and more.

Two books have been influential in pushing me to explore the nature of “quality”—Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig and The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander. Both explore the nature of quality as more than a simple adjective, as a force we all share but struggle to define.

In his classic, Pirsig embarks on a road trip/spiritual quest to explore the elusive nature of quality. He believed quality wasn’t a thing but an event—an alignment between subject and object.

That sounds academic enough; what the hell does it mean, though? That's a good question, and I intend to explore it, especially from the point of view of designing products and experiences that the world increasingly relies on to get through daily life. The nature of quality—elusive and misunderstood as it is—will determine whether these creations matter.

Long ago, Plato also delved into this mystery, saying, ‘The Good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.’ In other words, what we might call ‘quality’ is hard to define, yet it plays a powerful role in how we perceive the world and make decisions.

When I look around at the products I’ve purchased, each of these decisions has been a result of a perception of quality that goes beyond the perfect alignment of screws on an iPhone or the cherry-red gloss of a Fender Telecaster. Is my sense of quality entirely my own, or is it shared? How do I compare that against the alternatives?

And then, come to think of it, am I a quality human? And what would I judge that by?

This newsletter may not answer all of those questions, but hopefully, it will deepen our understanding of how quality shapes our creations, the things we value, and our lives overall.

I’d love to hear your thoughts—how do you define quality in the things you create or value most in life?