
You Don’t Get to Define ‘Quality’  - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.cindyalvarez.com/blog/decisionmaking/you-dont-get-to-define-quality
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coffeemug
This reminds me of the infamous comparisons between the M16 and the AK47
assault rifles. The M16 is a superior weapon by almost every standard - it's
crafted out of lighter, aeronautical materials, it has a beautiful, elegant
design, it's far more precise and has far less recoil.

Except nobody cares. What people want is to pull their weapon out of a muddy
hole after it's been there for a week, and have it reliably shoot thirty
rounds.

~~~
roc
That's what _some_ people want. Some of the time. Which I believe is the point
of the article.

Unless you know all the circumstances of what someone needs a weapon for, you
can't say the M16 is better _or worse_ than the AK47. (People who don't have
to store their weapon in a muddy hole or go weeks without resupply may and do
prefer the M16 for its characteristics)

Simply: there is no universal measurement of quality for any designed product.

Even _hammers_ have trade-offs in their design that prevent absolute quality
measurements.

~~~
coffeemug
I disagree. That's what most people want most of the time. There are
specialized situations where M16 is a better choice, but for the most part
people want the AK47. The numbers speak for themselves - more AK47s were sold
in the world than all other assault rifles combined.

There is no universal scale of quality, but if you're trying to hit it big you
have to keep in mind what most people want most of the time, and it's usually
not what first comes to mind.

~~~
dagw
_more AK47s were sold in the world than all other assault rifles combined._

Don't you think that that is more due to price and availability than anything
else. I imagine buying a case of M16s can be quite tricky in the middle of the
mountains in North Pakistan, while you probably have at least two people in
your circle of friends who knows I guy who makes AK47s in his workshop.

So to draw the AK47 analogy to its logical conclusion, If you want your
product to hit it big make it easy to build give away plans on how to built it
to everybody without any sort patent, copyright or royalty claims. Remember
that the vast majority or AK47s bought are knockoffs and that the original
company doesn't see a dime from those sales.

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cromulent
Reminds me of the bit in _Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance_ where he
asks the Indian guy what sort of dog it is, and he says "its a good dog".
Value judgment, not brand awareness.

------
thaumaturgy
I have an important chunk of video stuck on a Flip. The Flip's insidious
custom format and the software it needs to install in order to do video
transfers is keeping me from retrieving the video that I took.

I _hate_ the Flip for this.

People keep confusing quality and simplicity. I didn't get a Flip because I'm
fond of mediocre products, and if I knew it wasn't even going to _work_ , then
I wouldn't have gotten at all. I got it because it's simple, and simplicity
has its own quality.

Some of the points in the article were good, but in the end, it sounded like
it was starting to migrate over to the camp that believes that mediocrity is a
good business strategy.

Fine. You might even be financially successful producing mediocre products and
services, things that barely work, services that frustrate people but not
quite enough that they actually decide to wage a crusade against your
business.

But I'd rather see more companies offering excellent products and services,
and including simplicity in their equation for quality.

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psyklic
I say that people still care about 'quality' and know what high-quality
products are (from a designer's POV). But consumers care about products which
produce high quality FOR THEIR USES. Flip phones produce good YouTube videos
for instance _with great form factor_ \- if that's what a consumer cares
about, they should go for it!

------
maudineormsby
Good article, but a bit dismissive of the claim in the Wired article that
things like MP3 are preventing people from discovering "real" quality.

~~~
Periodic
I think the great majority of people wouldn't know real quality if you showed
them an example side-by-side with the thing they know. I think we often use
price queues to figure that out.

And I think people have different needs at different times. I listen almost
entirely to MP3s and Internet radio, except when I go to the symphony. I watch
a lot of videos on YouTube and Hulu, except when I go to the movies.

High quality isn't something everyone wants all the time.

~~~
ams6110
Reminds me of Negroponte's observation (in his book _Being Digital_ from
sometime in the mid 1990s). At the time, digital television was hung up in
debates about what high-definition standard to use. He said that for most
people most of the time, standard def was fine and that in focusing on a level
of "quality" that most people did not care about, a lot of other potentially
interesting and useful things you could do in the same bandwidth were not
being developed. At least, that's what I recall now. It's been at least 10
years since I looked at that book.

~~~
maudineormsby
Although it seems now that for most people HD is something they notice and
care about. So perhaps that hints at the need for people to be trained to
appreciate quality?

In other words, do they like HD because it's better or because they've been
told that it's better?

I noticed a difference immediately when I saw an HD demo. It was in 1999, and
I saw it at a science center (COSI, Columbus, OH). But some of the people I
was with literally could not figure out which TV was which.

