Definition

Quality refers to the degree of excellence of a entity (performance, good, service, experience, or similar) in a holistic sense , especially with respect to achieving its intended purpose.

Here is another way to say this: Quality refers to how good something is compared to other similar things.

Quality ranges from low to high (@fig-quality-scale).

Examples

1. Personal Life:
   The quality of a homemade meal can be judged by its taste, nutritional value, and how well it satisfies hunger compared to a similar dish from a restaurant.

2. Air Quality: The air quality is typically rated as shown in @fig-aqi

4. Sports:
   In soccer, the quality of a player’s performance is often measured by their ability to execute passes, score goals, and contribute to the team’s success, compared to other players in the same position.

5. Companies:
   A company’s customer service quality is evaluated by how effectively and quickly it resolves customer issues, compared to other companies offering similar services.

6. Technology:
   The quality of a smartphone can be assessed by its design, battery life, and performance speed when running applications, especially in comparison to other smartphones on the market.

Quality applies to a wide range of things, including goods, services, performances, and experiences. For example, we can talk about the quality of a book, a movie, a car, a haircut, someone’s musical performance, a college course, a restaurant meal, a vacation, a computer code base, and so on.

Rationale

1. Providing high quality entities for others provides one with the satisfaction of doing something well. This inspires craftsman, writers, designers, builders, and many others.

2. High quality entities sell better and thus make businesses work better.

3. Focusing on quality in the eyes of the end users of a product put the focus on them and not on others.

4. Most employees prefer working on something that has high quality.

5. If something has high quality, this often means that you like it better that its alternatives. Thus, if you can consistently recognize high quality, you can maximize your odds of getting what you like the best.

If you can consistently recognize high quality, it provides a significant advantage across various areas of life. Here are some examples of how this skill can be applied:

1. Identify the Best Companies to Work For
2. Identify the Best People to Hire
3. Identify the Best Information
4. Figure Out the Best Methods
5. Choose the best investments.
6. Choose the best relationships
7. Select the best educational resources

How to Achieve High Quality

1. Design: Figure out or revise the elements (essential parts) of quality and how to build these into your entity. Consider the following submethods.

   1. Using clear and measurable goals.

   2. Doing research to figure out user preferences.

   3. Using quality standards to make quality objective.

2. Build: Make your entity.

3. Application: Have end user use your entity and also get data that tells you what your user’s like and what improvements they’d want. Gather this data objectively, focusing on understanding their needs and desired improvements.

4. Iteration: Loop back and redesign, rebuild and redo things as needed and as they make sense (the rewards greatly exceed the drawbacks). Keep this cycle up indefinitely because there is no upper limit to quality.