Karri Saarinen:

Christoper Alexander opens his book Timeless Way of Building, that in order to build with a timeless way, we first need to find the “quality without a name”.

What he is saying is that quality exists, it can be experienced and perceived, but it cannot be described by words. A town, place, or building that just feels good and natural.

You can spec that a door needs hinges and locks that function, but we all have experienced a wide range of very smoothly working, quality doors, and very janky working, bad quality doors.

One of the things that happens as a company grows, and teams get bigger and more diverse (in taste, skill, craftsmanship) is that it looks for ways to remove subjectivity — to make everything an objective, measurable, chartable attribute in an analytics report. Karri points out here that quality, which everyone strives for and agrees that they value, is often an indescribable, unmeasurable characteristic.

Maintaining the highest bar for craftsmanship requires you rely more on the senses — actually using what you built, inserting it into your routine, feel it, use it in its realistic context.