5 ms·

The Two Types of Quality

82 points by herbertl 4y ago

nateb2022 4y ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32343180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32343180
- Sujan 4y ago
  More a second try I would say. Lovely that I found this article via that.
kqr 4y ago
I've heard this broken down into "needs" and "wants" before. Apenwarr broke this down in a long article I can't do justice by summarising, so here it is: https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=202110 https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=202110
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  re: Needs versus wants I didn't quite get that. Obviously there are many partitions on "quality", Pirsig's is static versus dynamic, and what Zeno Rocha seems to be outlining is functional versus non-functional, an ancient distinction in engineering (SE). But there's something deeper. The second type, "miryokuteki hinshitsu" seems more akin to "Je ne sais quoi", the perhaps surprising quality that is delightful, being neither something you needed or wanted but something you didn't even know you'd like. Toward the end of the essay he nails something darker too - the misappropriation of that expectation that comes in the arrogance of some designs to presume to know the users' "experience". That is the sense in which I've sometimes found the concept of UX offensive. No designer gets to reach into the realm of subjective experience. It's something that Artists know, but where designers sometimes transgress.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
baxtr 4y ago
atarimae hinshitsu A pen will write. miryokuteki hinshitsu A pen will write in a way that is pleasing to the writer AND leave behind ink that is pleasing to the reader. http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in-business/ http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in...
- CharlieDigital 4y ago
  Honestly, it feels a bit overplayed. Some great examples: Steam. Epic's UI looks pretty, but Steam is more functional. Amazon. A cluttered and messy UX (don't even peek at their APIs and backend). Yet a dominant e-commerce platform. Workday. Yuck. Toyota. Mazda builds prettier cars, but Toyota dominates Mazda. eBay. Craigslist. HN. Reddit. Design is important, but utility is where value is created.
  - baxtr 4y ago
    Thanks for your examples. Made me think. I wonder if the audience is the key angle for looking at this. For example: - HN is beautiful and elegant to my eyes. So simple. So clean. Adding some counter-examples: - Most luxury brands' cars are beautiful for people who crave elegant things - Airbnb looks amazing to people who care about great interiors I don’t know about your other example except for amazon, which is definitely ugly as f. But then again, it’s “just” a retailer for standard stuff, and I know a lot of brands with nice-looking things that don’t want to be listed there. Also, on their purely digital product, I dig their competitors much more, e.g. Netflix over Prime.
burlesona 4y ago
The author misunderstands why Jira sucks. It’s not great at generating charts and graphs for upper management. It’s unopinionated, and attempts to be utterly customizable so that you can use it for anything you want to track. Linear tells you right on their marketing site, the difference is Linear is opinionated. It’s better for software development because it’s designed for it, and worse at other things as a trade off.
- iovrthoughtthis 4y ago
  this is not my experience. Jira is actually very opinionated about things in my experience. e.g. task hierarchies
  - iasay 4y ago
    Unfortunately JIRA is opinionated but misinformed.
  - igetspam 4y ago
    Old jira was a kitchen sink. New jira seems to follow the Jobs philosophy or thinking they know what we want more than we do. They've never had a good middle ground. Old jira was impossible to configure because of all the knobs and new jira is impossible to configure because they took away all the knobs.
lifthrasiir 4y ago
A bit off-topic but I don't like how the OP treats atarimae & miryokuteki hinshitsu (typically translated as must-be & attractive qualities) like proper nouns without a translation, while they are just how Dr. Noriaki Kano explained them back in 1984. Those conditions are collectively called the Kano model [1] and treating them as untranslatable proper nouns do not help anyone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model
Archelaos 4y ago
I wonder where the design of HN fits in. Of course it is atarimae hinshitsu. But is it not at the same time miryokuteki hinshitsu, because it is so elegantly atarimae hinshitsu?
carlmr 4y ago
There's a third type of quality. Quality on paper. That is the kind of quality where you can check off all the boxes in your process, but still don't necessarily have a good product at the end.
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  In some types of Quality Control operations, the two types of quality are passing, failing, and marginal.
togaen 4y ago
So it’s just “form” and “function,” which are types of quality the English-speaking world has also been concerned with for quite some time.
shinzui 4y ago
Unfortunately, it's extremely rare to find software that exhibits "miryokuteki hinshitsu." The author's examples are not quite right. For example, linear is missing too many core features to be useful for many use cases.

82 points by herbertl 4y ago

nateb2022 4y ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32343180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32343180

Sujan 4y ago
More a second try I would say. Lovely that I found this article via that.

kqr 4y ago

I've heard this broken down into "needs" and "wants" before. Apenwarr broke this down in a long article I can't do justice by summarising, so here it is: https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=202110 https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=202110

nonrandomstring 4y ago
re: Needs versus wants I didn't quite get that. Obviously there are many partitions on "quality", Pirsig's is static versus dynamic, and what Zeno Rocha seems to be outlining is functional versus non-functional, an ancient distinction in engineering (SE). But there's something deeper. The second type, "miryokuteki hinshitsu" seems more akin to "Je ne sais quoi", the perhaps surprising quality that is delightful, being neither something you needed or wanted but something you didn't even know you'd like. Toward the end of the essay he nails something darker too - the misappropriation of that expectation that comes in the arrogance of some designs to presume to know the users' "experience". That is the sense in which I've sometimes found the concept of UX offensive. No designer gets to reach into the realm of subjective experience. It's something that Artists know, but where designers sometimes transgress.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

baxtr 4y ago

atarimae hinshitsu A pen will write. miryokuteki hinshitsu A pen will write in a way that is pleasing to the writer AND leave behind ink that is pleasing to the reader. http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in-business/ http://particletree.com/features/the-importance-of-design-in...

CharlieDigital 4y ago
Honestly, it feels a bit overplayed. Some great examples: Steam. Epic's UI looks pretty, but Steam is more functional. Amazon. A cluttered and messy UX (don't even peek at their APIs and backend). Yet a dominant e-commerce platform. Workday. Yuck. Toyota. Mazda builds prettier cars, but Toyota dominates Mazda. eBay. Craigslist. HN. Reddit. Design is important, but utility is where value is created.
- baxtr 4y ago
  Thanks for your examples. Made me think. I wonder if the audience is the key angle for looking at this. For example: - HN is beautiful and elegant to my eyes. So simple. So clean. Adding some counter-examples: - Most luxury brands' cars are beautiful for people who crave elegant things - Airbnb looks amazing to people who care about great interiors I don’t know about your other example except for amazon, which is definitely ugly as f. But then again, it’s “just” a retailer for standard stuff, and I know a lot of brands with nice-looking things that don’t want to be listed there. Also, on their purely digital product, I dig their competitors much more, e.g. Netflix over Prime.

burlesona 4y ago

The author misunderstands why Jira sucks. It’s not great at generating charts and graphs for upper management. It’s unopinionated, and attempts to be utterly customizable so that you can use it for anything you want to track. Linear tells you right on their marketing site, the difference is Linear is opinionated. It’s better for software development because it’s designed for it, and worse at other things as a trade off.

iovrthoughtthis 4y ago
this is not my experience. Jira is actually very opinionated about things in my experience. e.g. task hierarchies
- iasay 4y ago
  Unfortunately JIRA is opinionated but misinformed.
- igetspam 4y ago
  Old jira was a kitchen sink. New jira seems to follow the Jobs philosophy or thinking they know what we want more than we do. They've never had a good middle ground. Old jira was impossible to configure because of all the knobs and new jira is impossible to configure because they took away all the knobs.

lifthrasiir 4y ago

A bit off-topic but I don't like how the OP treats atarimae & miryokuteki hinshitsu (typically translated as must-be & attractive qualities) like proper nouns without a translation, while they are just how Dr. Noriaki Kano explained them back in 1984. Those conditions are collectively called the Kano model [1] and treating them as untranslatable proper nouns do not help anyone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model

Archelaos 4y ago

I wonder where the design of HN fits in. Of course it is atarimae hinshitsu. But is it not at the same time miryokuteki hinshitsu, because it is so elegantly atarimae hinshitsu?

carlmr 4y ago

There's a third type of quality. Quality on paper. That is the kind of quality where you can check off all the boxes in your process, but still don't necessarily have a good product at the end.

fuzzfactor 4y ago
In some types of Quality Control operations, the two types of quality are passing, failing, and marginal.

togaen 4y ago

So it’s just “form” and “function,” which are types of quality the English-speaking world has also been concerned with for quite some time.

shinzui 4y ago

Unfortunately, it's extremely rare to find software that exhibits "miryokuteki hinshitsu." The author's examples are not quite right. For example, linear is missing too many core features to be useful for many use cases.