1. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
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  3. Abo, Akinori 9
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  15. Arango, Jorge 4
  16. architecture 110
  17. art 86
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  19. attention 17
  20. Auping, Michael 6
  21. Aurelius, Marcus 14
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  23. Baker, Nicholson 10
  24. beauty 58
  25. Behrensmeyer, Anna K. 7
  26. Bjarnason, Baldur 8
  27. Blake, William 5
  28. blogging 22
  29. body 11
  30. Boeing, Geoff 7
  31. boredom 9
  32. Botton, Alain de 38
  33. Brand, Stewart 4
  34. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  35. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  36. Broskoski, Charles 6
  37. brutalism 7
  38. building 16
  39. bureaucracy 12
  40. Burnham, Bo 9
  41. business 15
  42. Byron, Lord 14
  43. Cagan, Marty 8
  44. Calvino, Italo 21
  45. Camus, Albert 13
  46. care 6
  47. Carruth, Shane 15
  48. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
  49. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  50. chance 11
  51. change 16
  52. Chiang, Ted 4
  53. childhood 6
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Clark, Robin 3
  58. Cleary, Thomas 8
  59. Cleary, J.C. 8
  60. code 20
  61. collaboration 18
  62. collections 31
  63. color 23
  64. commonplace 11
  65. communication 31
  66. community 7
  67. complexity 11
  68. connection 24
  69. constraints 25
  70. construction 9
  71. content 9
  72. Corbusier, Le 13
  73. Coyier, Chris 4
  74. craft 66
  75. creativity 59
  76. crime 9
  77. Critchlow, Tom 5
  78. critique 10
  79. Cross, Nigel 12
  80. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
  81. css 11
  82. culture 13
  83. curiosity 11
  84. cycles 7
  85. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  86. darkness 28
  87. Darwin, Will 10
  88. data 8
  89. death 38
  90. Debord, Guy 6
  91. decisions 10
  92. design 131
  93. details 31
  94. Dickinson, Emily 9
  95. Dieste, Eladio 4
  96. discovery 9
  97. doors 7
  98. Dorn, Brandon 11
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  100. Drucker, Peter F. 15
  101. Duany, Andres 18
  102. Eatock, Daniel 4
  103. economics 13
  104. efficiency 7
  105. Eisenman, Peter 8
  106. Eliot, T.S. 14
  107. emotion 8
  108. ending 14
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  110. Eno, Brian 4
  111. ethics 14
  112. euphony 38
  113. Evans, Benedict 4
  114. evolution 9
  115. experience 14
  116. farming 8
  117. fashion 11
  118. features 25
  119. feedback 6
  120. flaws 10
  121. Flexner, Abraham 8
  122. food 16
  123. form 19
  124. Fowler, Martin 4
  125. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  126. friendship 6
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  128. function 31
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  130. gardens 26
  131. Garfield, Emily 4
  132. Garfunkel, Art 6
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  134. geometry 18
  135. goals 9
  136. Gombrich, E. H. 4
  137. goodness 12
  138. Graham, Paul 37
  139. graphics 13
  140. Greene, Erick 6
  141. Hamming, Richard 45
  142. happiness 17
  143. Harford, Tim 4
  144. Harper, Thomas J. 15
  145. Hayes, Brian 28
  146. heat 7
  147. Heinrich, Bernd 7
  148. Herbert, Frank 4
  149. Heschong, Lisa 27
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  156. Hoyt, Ben 5
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  158. Hudlow, Gandalf 4
  159. humanity 16
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  162. hypermedia 22
  163. i 18
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  165. identity 33
  166. images 10
  167. industry 9
  168. information 42
  169. infrastructure 17
  170. innovation 15
  171. interaction 10
  172. interest 10
  173. interfaces 37
  174. intuition 8
  175. invention 10
  176. Irwin, Robert 65
  177. Isaacson, Walter 28
  178. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  179. iteration 13
  180. Ive, Jonathan 6
  181. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  182. Jacobs, Jane 54
  183. Jacobs, Alan 5
  184. Jobs, Steve 20
  185. Jones, Nick 5
  186. Kahn, Louis 4
  187. Kakuzō, Okakura 23
  188. Kaufman, Kenn 4
  189. Keith, Jeremy 6
  190. Keller, Jenny 10
  191. Keqin, Yuanwu 8
  192. Ketheswaran, Pirijan 6
  193. Kingdon, Jonathan 5
  194. Kitching, Roger 7
  195. Klein, Laura 4
  196. Kleon, Austin 13
  197. Klinkenborg, Verlyn 24
  198. Klyn, Dan 20
  199. knowledge 29
  200. Kohlstedt, Kurt 12
  201. Kramer, Karen L. 10
  202. Krishna, Golden 10
  203. Kuma, Kengo 18
  204. language 20
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  206. life 59
  207. light 31
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  209. love 26
  210. Lovell, Sophie 16
  211. Lupton, Ellen 11
  212. Luu, Dan 8
  213. Lynch, Kevin 12
  214. MacIver, David R. 8
  215. MacWright, Tom 5
  216. Magnus, Margaret 12
  217. making 77
  218. management 14
  219. Manaugh, Geoff 27
  220. Markson, David 16
  221. Mars, Roman 13
  222. material 39
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  224. McCarter, Robert 21
  225. meaning 33
  226. media 16
  227. melancholy 52
  228. memory 29
  229. metaphor 10
  230. metrics 19
  231. microsites 49
  232. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  233. Mills, C. Wright 9
  234. minimalism 10
  235. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  236. Mod, Craig 15
  237. modularity 6
  238. Mollison, Bill 31
  239. morality 8
  240. Murakami, Haruki 21
  241. music 16
  242. Müller, Boris 7
  243. Naka, Toshiharu 8
  244. names 11
  245. Naskrecki, Piotr 5
  246. nature 51
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  248. Neustadter, Scott 3
  249. Noessel, Christopher 7
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  256. Ott, Matthias 4
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  286. Pye, David 42
  287. quality 26
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quality

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  • On Taste

    The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is — and I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way — in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their product. And you say “well why is that important?” Well, you know, proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books, so that’s where one gets the idea. And if it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products.

    And so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success — I have no problem with their success. They have earned their success — I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products. Their products have no spirit to them, no spirit of enlightenment about them. They are very pedestrian. And the sad part is that most customers don’t have that spirit either. But the way that we’re going to ratchet up our species is to take the best and to spread it around to everybody so that everybody grows up with better things, and starts to understand the subtlety of these better things. And Microsoft is McDonald’s.

    So that’s what saddens me — not that Microsoft has won, but that Microsoft’s products don’t display more insight and more creativity.

    Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
    1. ​​The aspiration for quality​​
    2. ​​We'll slap a little color on this piece of junk​​
    3. ​​Such an unholy alliance​​
    4. ​​Do they really need it?​​
    • taste
    • quality
  • It passes by the river

    "Artists need to be in there from the start, making the argument for quality. The key to this thing is, for example, if you give an engineer a set of criteria which does not include a quality quotient, as it were—that is, if this sense of the quality, the character of the place, is not a part of his original motivation—he will then basically put the road straight down the middle. He has no reason to curve it. But if I can convince him that quality is absolutely a worthwhile thing and we can work out a way in which the road can be efficient and also wander down by the river, then we essentially have both: he provides his sort of expertise in that the road works, I provide quality in that it passes by the river. In that way, art gets built into the criteria from the beginning rather than being added on afterward."

    Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
    1. ​​We want you to work with an artist​​
    2. ​​The problem with ornament​​
    • quality
    • design
    • function
    • collaboration
  • SAFe is oriented around volume, not value

    In all this focus on volume metrics, estimation, and churning work through the pipeline, the concept of what’s actually valuable or successful is easily lost. It’s often assumed that more work shipped out the door must be “value”, even if the experience of the product is actually suffering and users are not benefiting from the additional features.

    Sean Dexter, Beware SAFe, an Unholy Incarnation of Darkness
    • metrics
    • quality
  • To bring out its noblest qualities

    Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad tea, as we have good and bad paintings—generally the latter. There is no single recipe for making the perfect tea...each preparation of the leaves has its individuality, its special affinity with water and heat, its own method of telling a story. The truly beautiful must always be in it. How much do we not suffer through the constant failure of society to recognize this simple and fundamental law of art and life.

    Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea
    • quality
  • We classify too much and enjoy too little

    A collector is anxious to acquire specimens to illustrate a period or a school, and forgets that a single masterpiece can teach us more than any number of the mediocre products of a given period or school. We classify too much and enjoy too little. The sacrifice of the aesthetic to the so-called scientific method of exhibition has been the bane of many museums.

    Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea
    • quality
  • All the way to the last bolt

    "Quality is only there," Irwin explained, "if you pursue it all the way to the last bolt." Consequently, how joints are finished must be specified in the contract. "And believe me," he added ruefully from experience, "there is a real discrepancy here. The difference [in] how we interpret the word finish or this word quality is really disparate."

    "When you bring them in and get them to be part of it," he noted, "the workmen themselves start to take pride in it. And when they start taking that pride in this idea of quality, ...it starts becoming theirs, something important to them, that they in fact do know what we are talking about."

    Robert Irwin, Robert Irwin: A Conditional Art
    • quality
    • craft
  • v0.crap

    I couldn’t seem to convince my writers that I was genuinely ok working with a super rough first draft — i.e., that I’d harbor no hidden judgment about their intelligence, commitment, or excellence at their craft.

    So I came up with a new word. “Just give me a v0.crap.” (Pronounced “version zero dot crap”.)

    v.0.crap works because it’s attuned to the psychology of the situation. It’s punching through our innate desire not to “look bad”, plus years of corporate conditioning that tells us not to share less-than-polished work. It’s easier for people used to delivering exceptional work to feel they’ve exceeded the goal of “crap”; they can sit comfortably in “good enough for the current purpose.”

    Courtney Hohne, The monkey, the tiger beetle and the language of innovation
    blog.x.company
    1. ​​Writing, Briefly​​
    • quality
    • ideas
    • writing
    • making
  • What excellence is

    Learn what excellence is, how to identify it...This is not a big reading assignment – excellence is scarce, lognormal, long-tailed. Acting on this knowledge is liberating, freeing oneself from vast piles of triviality, knock-offs, petty connoisseurship, over-publishing, and the short-sighted, trendy, greedy. Excellence is long-term knowledge, even forever knowledge.

    Excellence, like good taste, is perhaps a universal quality. Analytical thinking is about the relationship between evidence and conclusions, and is fundamental to all empirical work, regardless of field, discipline, specialty. Thus it is possible at times to assess credibility of nonfiction work without being a content expert. Thinking eyes may well have an eye for excellence, regardless of field or discipline.

    Edward Tufte, Seeing With Fresh Eyes
    1. ​​Tetlock and the Taliban​​
    • quality
    • genius
  • The aspiration for quality

    To arouse the aspiration for quality and make good on it, the organization itself has to be well crafted in form. It needs, like Nokia, open information networks; it has to be willing to wait, as Apple is, to bring its products to market until they are really good.

    Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
    1. ​​On Taste​​
    2. ​​More profitable and a better buy​​
    • work
    • quality
  • Eating your own dog food

    Eating your own dog food or “dogfooding” is the practice of using one's own products or services. This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage using product management techniques. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, and eventually a kind of testimonial advertising. Once in the market, dogfooding can demonstrate developers confidence in their own products.

    Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
    1. ​​Designer, implementor, user, writer​​
    2. ​​The reflective craftsman​​
    • quality
    • products
    • design
  • More profitable and a better buy

    The bottom line is certainly of concern, both to those seeking profit and to those seeking value, but neither of these can be measured solely by the amount of dollars spent on production or product. The nonquantitative word "quality" conveys countless ways in which a more expensive thing might be more profitable and yet a better buy as well. The advantages of thicker metal in an automobile body can clearly be argued from various points of view, including resistance to denting and even simple snob appeal. Whereas the manufacturer can use these as selling points and also as justification for a higher price tag, the buyer can easily justify spending more for a car that will keep its appearance longer and provide a status symbol.

    Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things
    1. ​​The aspiration for quality​​
    2. ​​The business case for craft​​
    • quality
  • Maybe I should sharpen soon

    image.png

    I've been doing this for decades, so I've found tools that can't get any better. Tools by a good blacksmith cut well for the entire day, as well as the next; occasionally, even on the third day. I'll think, maybe I should sharpen soon, even though it's still cutting okay.

    So that's what it's like — it's all about how good your tools are.

    Akinori Abo, Kigumi House
    • tools
    • quality
  • You'll know it's there

    Jobs's father had once taught him that a drive for perfection meant caring about the craftsmanship even of the parts unseen. Jobs applied that to the layout of the circuit board inside the Apple II. He rejected the initial design because the lines were not straight enough.


    In an interview a few years later, after the Macintosh came out, Jobs again reiterated that lesson from his father: "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."

    Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
    1. ​​All the way through​​
    • craft
    • quality
  • Measured by the number of its features

    A primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want. Any incompatibility with the original system concept is either ignored or passes unrecognized, which renders the design more complicated and its use more cumbersome. When a system's power is measured by the number of its features, quantity becomes more important than quality. Every new release must offer additional features, even if some don't add functionality.

    Niklaus Wirth, A Plea for Lean Software
    • features
    • quality
    • complexity

    Emphasis mine.

  • There is no kogin that can be called poor

    Yanagi Sōetsu, The Characteristics of Kogin
    • quality

    I wonder if this is because the technical barrier to entry is so high that no middle ground exists. Either you lack the skill to make it at all, or you have the ability to make it beautifully.

  • Ensuring Excellence

    An Article by Marty Cagan
    www.svpg.com

    …in so many of the best product companies there is an additional dimension that goes beyond individual empowered product teams, and even goes beyond achieving business results.

    It has to do with ensuring a level of what I’ll refer to here as “excellence” although that is clearly a very ambiguous term.

    Over the years, this concept has been referred to by many different names, always necessarily vague, but all striving to convey the same thing: “desirability,” “aha moments,” “wow factor,” “magic experiences,” or “customer delight,” to list just a few.

    The concept is that an effective product that achieves results is critical, but sometimes we want to go even beyond that, to provide something special.

    Maybe it’s because we believe this is needed to achieve the necessary value. Maybe it’s because the company has built its brand on inspiring customers.

    Often this dimension shows up most clearly in product design, where functional, usable but uninspiring designs can often achieve our business results, but great design can propel us into this realm of the inspiring.

    1. ​​Do they really need it?​​
    • quality
    • craft
    • products
    • software
  • Avant-Garde and Kitsch

    An Essay by Clement Greenberg
    theoria.art-zoo.com

    Capitalism in decline finds that whatever of quality it is still capable of producing becomes almost invariably a threat to its own existence.

    • quality
    • economics
    • culture
    • art
  • Weinberg's Law

    A Quote by Gerald Weinberg
    quoteinvestigator.com

    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

    • programming
    • making
    • architecture
    • quality
  • The value-destroying effect of arbitrary date pressure on code

    An Article by Gandalf Hudlow
    iism.org
    Image from iism.org on 2021-08-10 at 9.31.59 PM.jpeg

    The mandate from above is clear, just get it done! Avoid everything that's in the way: all advice, all expertise, all discovery efforts that detract from hitting the Date™!

    What these organizations don't realize is that all software change can be modeled as three components: Value, Filler and Chaos. Chaos destroys Value and Filler is just functionality that nobody wants. When date pressure is applied to software projects, the work needed to remove Chaos is subtly placed on the chopping block. Work like error handling, clear logging, chaos & load testing and other quality work is quietly deferred in favor of hitting the Date™.

    1. ​​Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake ​​
    • agile
    • planning
    • quality
    • discovery
  • Minimum Awesome Product

    An Article by Carlos Beneyto
    theuxblog.com
    Image from theuxblog.com on 2021-02-23 at 10.26.25 AM.png

    Users are accustomed to a minimum of quality, and they expect that of all new products.

    If our product does not [meet basic expectations of quality], people will automatically believe that it is a bad product and they will not take it seriously. It is not what they expect.

    Hence my suggestion that the MVP has died and the MAP: Minimum Awesome Product was born.

    1. ​​Understanding the Kano Model​​
    2. ​​Don't Serve Burnt Pizza​​
    3. ​​What happens to user experience in a minimum viable product?​​
    • quality
    • ux
    • features
    • software
  • What happens to user experience in a minimum viable product?

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    signalvnoise.com
    Screenshot of signalvnoise.com on 2021-09-05 at 1.22.31 PM.png

    "Feature complexity is like surface area and quality of execution is like height. I want a base level of quality execution across all features. Whenever I commit to building or expanding a feature, I'm committing to a baseline of effort on the user experience."

    There’s a distinction to make: The set of features you choose to build is one thing. The level you choose to execute at is another. You can decide whether or not to include a feature like ‘reset password’. But if you decide to do it, you should live up to a basic standard of execution on the experience side.

    Features can be different sizes with more or less complexity, but quality of experience should be constant across all features. That constant quality of experience is what gives your customers trust. It demonstrates to them that whatever you build, you build well.

    1. ​​Minimum Awesome Product​​
    • quality
    • products
    • features
    • ux
  • Why YKK zippers are the brown M&Ms of product design

    An Article by Josh Centers
    theprepared.com

    A ‘pro tip’ for evaluating the quality of a piece of gear is to look at the small details, such as zippers and stitching. Cheap-minded manufacturers will skimp on those details because most people just don’t notice, and even a cheap component will often last past a basic warranty period, so it’s an easy way to increase profits without losing sales or returns.

    If a designer does bother to invest in quality components, that’s a tried-and-true sign that the overall product is better than the competition.

    1. ​​All the way through​​
    2. ​​The Cycle of Goodness​​
    • design
    • details
    • quality
  • The McNamara fallacy

    A Definition
    en.wikipedia.org

    The McNamara fallacy, named for Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, involves making a decision based solely on quantitative observations (or metrics) and ignoring all others. The reason given is often that these other observations cannot be proven.

    The fallacy refers to McNamara's belief as to what led the United States to defeat in the Vietnam War—specifically, his quantification of success in the war (e.g., in terms of enemy body count), ignoring other variables.

    1. ​​Artifice, blindness, and suicide​​
    • war
    • logic
    • metrics
    • quality
  • Artifice, blindness, and suicide

    A Quote
    en.wikipedia.org

    The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

    1. ​​The McNamara fallacy​​
    • metrics
    • quality
    • goodness

    Daniel Yankelovich, "Corporate Priorities: A continuing study of the new demands on business" (1972).

  • Figma's Engineering Values: Craftsmanship

    An Article
    www.figma.com

    Craftsmanship is about thoughtfulness and care in the work we do. It means being deliberate about what we build and how possible it will be to maintain and extend in the future. A solution that will require revisiting in a month — because it’s not scaling, because it has a ton of bugs, because it doesn’t support all the use cases it needs to — is not useful to us and ultimately will generate pain for our users.

    What we trade off by living this value is (sometimes) day-to-day speed. It’s easy to imagine an engineering team that emphasizes moving fast over keeping things stable and bug-free -- like a team building a product that isn’t responsible for important user data and doesn’t support anyone’s livelihood. But given the role the Figma product plays in the lives of our users, we feel it’s worth it to ensure we hold a high quality bar for them. And in the long run, being thoughtful about how we build often reduces the complexity of ongoing development and new features regardless.

    • craft
    • software
    • quality
  • The psychology of a discount

    An Article by John Maeda
    maeda.pm
    Image from maeda.pm on 2020-07-06 at 10.06.24 AM.jpeg

    Found on a wall.

    The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.

    • quality
    • economics

See also:
  1. craft
  2. design
  3. software
  4. features
  5. metrics
  6. products
  7. economics
  8. making
  9. ux
  10. function
  11. collaboration
  12. ideas
  13. writing
  14. complexity
  15. details
  16. war
  17. logic
  18. goodness
  19. work
  20. taste
  21. agile
  22. planning
  23. discovery
  24. tools
  25. genius
  26. programming
  27. architecture
  28. culture
  29. art
  1. Robert Irwin
  2. Okakura Kakuzō
  3. Lawrence Wechler
  4. John Maeda
  5. Courtney Hohne
  6. Yanagi Sōetsu
  7. Carlos Beneyto
  8. Niklaus Wirth
  9. Josh Centers
  10. Richard Sennett
  11. Steve Jobs
  12. Walter Isaacson
  13. Gandalf Hudlow
  14. Ryan Singer
  15. Akinori Abo
  16. Henry Petroski
  17. Edward Tufte
  18. Gerald Weinberg
  19. Sean Dexter
  20. Clement Greenberg
  21. Marty Cagan