Brilliantly done brief about quality of design, linking hardware, software, restaurant management, and, I would add, life in general:
[Q]uality offerings display self similarity. Any small part of it, is indicative of its whole. This lets you make a good judgement about an entire product by looking at a very small portion of it. This is as true in software as it is in restaurants.
If you ever expect to do a start-up at any time in your life, commit these words to memory. Commit the concept to your very frigging soul.
Though that comes off as hyperbole, it is not. Something I have been trying to get across in my “Startup 101” courses (on guitars and consumer electronics) as well as in our introductory design class is that to do good design you must obsess about it. That is the only way to get it right.
The easiest path to innovation is good design, and innovation is what gives you the type of economic growth that makes everyone in society wealthier. I’ve been ranting about that for a while (latest talk here, other talks here).
Come to think of it, I should rant about it here as well.
[Update: just write up a huge rant here]
