

Quality is Fractal, from restaurants to software.  - destraynor
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/the-thickness-of-napkins/

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ajross
This is a nice piece on aesthetics, right up to the last bit where it talks
about technology and veers off the cliff.

The example simply makes no sense. In what way is a laptop with (gasp) modular
panels and air vents (the horrors!) of lower quality than the apple thing?
Modularity is good, it allows piecewise replacement of parts by untrained (or
less trained) service personnel. Air vents are good, because they keep the CPU
cool. Clean design is good too, because it makes people happy. What we have
here is a collision of design goals, not a quality metric.

The author is trying to make a purely aesthetic point (Apple laptops look
pretty) and extend it to one of hardware (and even software) quality. But that
fails, because "quality" isn't always about aesthetics. It's about practical
concerns. Maybe the Mac aesthetics are a net win, even at a $200 premium;
maybe they're not. Maybe better ventilation is important; maybe it's not.

~~~
marilyn
Many of the people who commented on the post called out the author for the
Apple example as coming out of left field and not being relevant to an
otherwise well thought out post.

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kingkawn
When I worked as an Emergency Medical Technician I observed that nursing homes
who regularly trim their residents' toenails are always of significantly
higher quality.

------
Whippet
This account reminds me of a company manager who oversaw their external
printing jobs. He would visit different printery/bindery operations, not your
kinko's sized stuff, but large Lith-o-man type offset presses.

He said he had all different types of metrics he used when evaluating a
potential vendor for his jobs. But what it usually all boiled down to was how
clean was the press area.

If the presses and surrounding area were grimy and tools, supplies etc. were
scattered about, he knew the jobs they did would most likely not meet his
expectations.

If however the area was clean and the press operators keeps things in order,
he could count on that vendor to produce a superior product.

~~~
elblanco
But counter examples along those lines are plentiful. I remember reading a
breathless writeup on a tour of a new VW plant. The cleanliness and spotless
floors were apparently the main important factor there. Yet VW cars are well
known in the industry as having serious quality issues with everything from
blistering paint to the continuously faulty electrical systems of the New
Beetle.

Here's a video of said plant. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd5WGLWNllA>

If this dog-and-pony show was representative of VWs efforts to reach parity
with the mechanical quality of say, the Honda Civic and Accord, then I would
say this "quality is fractal" idea would have some merit. But even a cursory
review of something as basic as mechanical reliability in consumer reports or
on true delta shows VWs to regularly be just "meh" in terms of reliability.

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Tekhne
This article follows a line of reasoning about quality which seems to lead to
the conclusion, in part, that Apple makes superior products. My question is
"compared to what?"

The conclusion is drawn based on the fallacious view that the properties
optimized by Apple are universally important. Britney Spears may be hot and
rich, but I wouldn't consider her a quality mate. She doesn't meet the minimum
set of criteria I'm looking for. In the same vein, not all of Apple's products
optimize on properties I care about (e.g. open source, full control of
configuration, etc.). Lots of other people probably disagree on both counts,
and that's okay.

The point is that while I agree quality is important, it's just as important
to know what properties of a thing you're judging or optimizing, and why. This
is especially true since the resources for producing anything are finite.

~~~
llimllib
Seems to me that the only conclusion he comes to is that Apple makes quality
products. Where does he imply that they're superior?

~~~
elblanco
But he doesn't even come to that conclusion in a logical way.

------
baha_man
"Gordon Ramsey, in his auto-biography, defended his obsessive perfectionist
nature..."

 _Ramsay_! It's Gordon _Ramsay_!

~~~
dagw
So what can we say about bloggers who cannot get the names of the people they
quote right?

~~~
randomtask
Hilarious. The equivalent of someone putting "amazing attention to detial" on
their resume.

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elblanco
Since I'm hungry I want to talk about restaurants for a second.

You can usually tell quality restaurants by a signature dish more than their
napkins.

For example, Pho places have to have good Pho. Pho is a touch dish to make
requiring lots of detail to assemble complex ingredients in the right
proportions over many hours. Good places are famous, bad places die.

Around where I live the best Pho place is "Pho 75". However, eating there is
like eating at a cheap cafeteria. There's almost no decoration, everybody eats
at long, fold-up tables like you might see at a middle school. They don't
really have much of a menu and it's printed as cheaply as possible and then
laminated so they don't have to print more. Napkins are the $2/1000 type you
get at institutions, the silverware is so cheap it's possibly dangerous, and
the chopsticks and soup spoons are made of heavy grade, dishwasher safe
plastic. There's almost no service from the staff, they get your order and
come back to drop off soup.

There are fancier places, with better napkins and silveware, tableclothes and
expensive statues of dragons and such in the area. There's a few places that
try to make Pho hip and trendy with modern lighting and fancy, custom interior
decorator designed decors and fancy napkins.

But Pho 75 regularly beats them all. The line at lunch is always out the door
(even in frigid weather), usually giving you about 10-15 minutes to actually
eat the steaming bowl of soup. Yet from appearances to new people, it's a
dive.

Anybody who's asked says they go to Pho 75 instead of some other place because
of the quality of the soup. Not because of the napkins.

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white_eskimo
Reminds me of the importance of a good product manager. So many big software
shops develop product today on the "feature level". As a result, developers
and "managers" lose sight of the customer's workflow. Understanding the
product from entry to exit and seeing how all of the pieces fit together is
critical to creating a good product.

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jbert
The basic observation is that, since all/most aspects of a system are likely
to be of high or low quality, you can use the quality of any of them as s
proxy metric for overall quality.

Note that this fails if the proxy metric becomes popular or standardised in
any way, since those providing the systems will realise they can appear to be
better by improving only that proxy metric.

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joe_the_user
Abuse of language warning;

I can't see any connection between restaurant quality and the particular
properties of _fractals_.

I mean, fractal properties appear in a situation such as when one section of
the coast of England resembles (statistically) another section of the coast of
England. I don't see the comfortable chair of a restaurant resembling the
thick napkin or the delicious steak of the restaurant in such a fashion.
They're just all product of a single, conscious plan - something fractals
generally are _not_.

It's shame people know so little about mathematical process that "fractal" is
the only analogy that's become popular enough to use. If people had a larger
pallet of terms, they could perhaps use them more correctly. Restaurant
quality and overall quality _is_ like a dynamic, feedback system. If only the
author had known...

~~~
mixmax
One of the defining characteristics of fractals is that they are _self
similar_ , meaning that a small part is similar to a larger part, or to the
whole. The authors argument is that there is a self similarity in the quality
of restaurants, by looking at a small part (in this case the napkin) you can
with a some certainty say what a larger part is like. Fractals don't have to
be geometric patterns, in this case it's the quality that's self-similar.
Fractals aren't pictures, they're a mathematical concept. In this case I think
the analogy is a good one.

~~~
boredguy8
They're also non-Euclidean geometric shapes. So calling it fractal is
ambiguous at best and requires you extract one element that makes a fractal.
While there are times writing in such a way can be helpful, this is not one of
those times. Instead, "Quality is consistent across levels" or even
"Organizational quality is self-similar".

~~~
mixmax
I didn't think fractals had to be geometric shapes, but Wikipedia seems to
agree with you, so I stand corrected. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal>)

I still think the analogy is pretty good though.

