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Quality and Cyberspace
When I was initially approached to
write something for this issue,
I followed my usual
practice of jumping on the net
(internet) to see what the
standard of play was. I
flabbergasted to
stumble across more poorly
constructed web-sites on
subject 'Quality' (of all
things), in one hour than I
would normally expect to
see in a month of
web-surfing. But on reflection,
this not at all that
surprising.
This article
will concentrate on Quality
concerns for presentations
in cyberspace as a vital
prerequisite for effective
e-commerce.
Your public-image in
cyberspace can be no-more
effective, attractive and
enticing than the quality of
your web-site. It is
highly unlike that a
visitor will purchase anything,
or come back for a return
peek if your web-pages are
buggy, messy, slow or
obscure. For constraints
of space, but most
significantly a
rapidly changing topic,
this article will be only a
broad-brush sketch with
some web-links at the end for a
more timely investigations.
Industrial Quality's Proud History
The Quality movement has a proud history
of, analyzing the production process then
developing methods and
techniques to improve,
both the processes'
efficiency and outcomes. From
the works of forgotten
pioneers like R.A. Fisher and
Walter Shewhart, to
the giants of Dr W. Edward
Deming and Dr. Joseph M. Juran, doing
the work of 'Quality' has been
about, identifying concerns, then
some feedback process to track
progress towards gaining
improvements. Aesthetic or Transcendent definitions of Quality, or
Metaphysics of Quality where seen as having no relevance to the real world.
Benchmarking, Quality Assurance (QA), Customer Satisfaction, Quality Control
(QC), Continuous Improvement, Software Quality Management
Systems (SQMS), Total Quality Management (TQM) {also know as
Total Quality Control (TQC)}, provided all the required certainty,
working particularly well when
one is dealing with
engineering tolerances,
conventional services
and traditional product
development cycles.
HTML the Flawed Revolution
Much hyperbole
been bandied about of the
dramatic developments of
the internet, the web, and
cyberspace. But previous
technological innovation
like the printing press, steam
power and the industrial
revolution, photography,
man-powered flight,
radio, and petrol driven
automobiles have all in there
time caste disruptive
ripples across societies
complacency. The
sociological impact of any
revolution is a consequence of
things changing faster
than people are equipped or
prepared for.
What many
do-not realize is despite all
the excitement the
web engenders, the current
manifestation has some
fundamental design flaws
that become rapidly obvious
once any major development
is to be undertaken, or
maintained for any length of
time. As far back as 1965
Ted Nelson coined the concept
of hypertext and academic
research has percolated along
since then,
Jakob Nielsen's work being
noteworthy from a quality
perspective. Ted Nelson's
visionary system 'Xanadu' was
always a little bit beyond
feasible, but as a
thought-experiment it
did highlight a number of
characteristics that should be
considered for any large
hypertext system such as ;-
low-level 'typed' linking,
temporal controls, copyright
attribution, along
with most of the features
of the web that we have come to
love.
HTTP (HyperText
Transfer Protocol) and HTML
(HyperText
Markup Language) were
initial developed to allow
documents to be
shared between
geographical dispersed nodes on
a 'discrete medium-scale'
computer network. That html
raged across the internet
like a bush-fire, transforming
the net into the
World Wide Web (WWW) is a
confirmation of the
html's utilitarianism not
html's ultimate suitability for
the job, or its' quality.
Most internet-surfers
are familiar with 'Error 404'
or broken links, like the
flashing oil-warning light on a
cars dashboard the 404 is
a warning that all is not well
with the web yet. Xanadu's
circumvented the broken-link
issue by never allowing
anything to be deleted from the
'docuverse' (Ted's name
for hypertext cyberspace).
No-deletion made possible
concepts like 'temporal
scrolling' allowing the
viewer to wind-back the
evolution of a document
or online-debate. Stricter
definitions of hypertext often
demand that all links are
bi-directional, you can not
link to something without
the target knowing where the
source link comes from.
For broken
links external to your
organization not much can be
done, other than
search-engines which sometimes
are helpful in finding a
lost target (however even the
best don't cover much more than
a third of the web).
Moreover within your own
organization, there are a
few alternatives for
exterminating embarrassing
404's from your web-site.
Problem often begin to occur
when you have;- more than
one in-house person authoring
material for the
site, more than one person
responsible for managing the
web-site and authoring
material on it, a tightly
linked site much larger
than about 20 pages, a
change in personnel (internal
or external) controlling
or authoring the site.
Unfortunately because
many word-processors will
spew html there is tendency
among management to
underestimate the complexity of
authoring and maintaining
even a small body of
hypertext over any significant
period of time. Web-sites
like any other software
development project require
at the very least
documentation (never be fooled
by the line that html is
self-documenting code), if of
nothing else, at least
a list of what is linked
to what! Better still is to add
source control system, or
even a full blown software
quality management system.
While HTML
is an open public standard,
beware that many products
by market leaders DO NOT
generate clean standard html.
Just because a page may
look great on the authors
screen, this is no
guarantee that it will
look even barely presentable on
an outsider visitor's
home-machine. Yes one can
exhaustively test the page
in question on a number of
different browsers at different
screen resolution, but a
better strategy is to restrict
authors to pure standard
html, then verify the result
against the
standards approved test
suit/sites. If you are not sure
how standard
your authoring tools are,
a quick test (when you are
sitting down) is to open
your web-page in another
authoring package J.
At the
end of the article are listed
some sites on standards
and design issues, for now
a few rules of thumb:- limit
any included graphics,
animations, sound files and the
like to less than
200K each; use percentages
instead of fixed units, for
table sizes and column
widths; avoid frames where-ever
possible (along with
other conceptual
short-comings, they can create
copyright
liability nightmares);
ideally include a hard-coded
link to your
site's home-page or
authors email on each page
(this so when a
viewer stumbles on your
page from a search engine they
can find you if they wish).
Implications of Cyberspace's for Quality.
Now lets
move from the nitty-gritty of
html to the big
picture future. The
difference between Cyberspace
and traditional production
or service undertaking can be
characterized along
few 'conceptual
fault-lines', with the
associated Quality Risks.
Speed & Volatility.
The internet
growth and development is
happening so fast that
the industry has coined
the term 'Web-time', the
concept that one year of
change on the web is equivalent
to seven year for any
other industry. Quality Risk
= pressure for quick fixes, loss of clear content / functional goals amongst the distractions and compromises of how it is to be realized, rapid change hemorrhaging any continuos improvement cycle (particularly when tight coupling occurs between proprietary tools and market niches or the developers skill-set.).
Instantaneous & International
Unlike restricted
and relative slow dissemination
of conventional publishing
and advertising channels of
print and
broadcast mediums, once
something is placed on the web
it is instantaneously
available to anybody any-where
in the world with a net
connection. Even if the viewer
cannot read the language
the page was authored in
technology like the BabelFish
will promptly translate
between many European languages
on the fly
(similar technology is
also under development for
number of
Asian languages).
Quality Risk
= cultural sensitivity, and international reach of the users native legal system engendering conflicting requirements and additional complexity.
If you
are selling product or services
over the net, what is
the legal context of the
internet in the viewers
country? what currency do
you denominate your charges and
fees in? do your
cost include international
freight and insurance? what are
your warranty obligations
in the recipients homeland?
A Visual / Multi-Dimensional / Multi-media environment.
While the
previous two 'conceptual
fault-lines' pose
not insignificant
challenges for the Quality
Systems, they are however
still manageable with-in the
technique arsenal of
TQM. Unfortunately the
conceptual fault-line between
the
physical literally-delineated
pre-cyberspace world-view,
versus that of a visual
virtual chaotic cyberspace, is
not so easily surmountable.
Despites HTML's
bias to text, even today much
of the web is primarily a
visual medium. With the rising
waves of Java (Sun's
"Write once, run anywhere"
programming language), XML
(eXtenable Markup
Language), and VRML (Virtual
Reality Markup
Langrage) cyberspace
entices to be an all-embracing
graphic
experience. William
Gibson's ( "Neuromancer" 1984
"Count Zero" 1986, "Mona
Lisa Overdrive" - 1988 )
and Neal Stephenson's
("Snow Crash" 1992) vision of
a shared on-line immersive
virtual alternative reality may
be an everyday occurrence
for many people with-in five
years. A few geeks are
even today strolling their
avatars around 3D
virtual plazas pumped
across the web from Germany and
Japan.
Lamentably the
traditional language of Quality
is all but exhausted
when encountering the
slippery world of visual
critique. Transcendental
discourses on Quality like
Robert M Pirsig's classic
'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance' (1974)
eloquently outlined the
problem, but the
solution articulated was
near meaningless to the non-art
public. Thankfully Pirsig
himself was not oblivious to
the inconclusiveness of
his first book, the sequel
'Lila: An Inquiry into
Morals' (1991) tackles the '
Metaphysics of Quality' head on.
'Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance' traces
the frustration of a
University lecturer Phaedrus as
he struggles to teach
students of rhetoric about
Quality in writing. From
the classics Phaedrus
demonstrates the supposed rules
and metrics that make a
work great. Unfortunately no
matter how slavishly
his student apply these
same techniques the results are
less than satisfactory,
but more distressingly for some
the rules become chains as
their writing deteriorates.
Pirsig then goes on
to discuss how Quality
transcends the
subjective-objective
dilemma being neither mind
nor matter, but rather the
dynamic value source that
gives form to the structure of
culture. (see the train
analogy pages 276-277).
As a student of sculpture having
been taught art by a process
of examples, exercises and
debate, Pirsig's assertion
that Quality transcends
measurements and can only be
learnt from experience was
proffering nothing out of the
ordinary. It was not until
I encountered theory of Quality
Assurance in the
software industry did I
realize how unorthodox Pirsig
views are seen by many
Quality practitioners. The Metaphysics
of Quality in 'Lila: an Inquiry into Morals' analyzes
how 'Value systems' become foundation and social
mediator to the cultural experience of Quality. Phaedrus
realizing that there are two independent forms of Quality;
Dynamic and Static. (see Lila pages 140-147)
So what
has this dry theory got to do
with the Quality of a
web site? While an
understanding of visual quality
may be learnt by years of
study, it is not just a case of
subjective of likes
and dislikes. I may not
like a painting because the I
find the subject
distasteful but I can still
attest to the quality of
the work. Conversely I
could adore a work of kitsch
but never be foolish
enough to argue that it is a
piece of great art. All
of us learn to speak and
write the same way, it becomes
second nature. No
supervisor would dream of
allowing a primary
school drop-out to write
the companies annual report,
but daily many managers
entrust the companies public
image in the graphic
medium of the web to
employees who's formal visual
education ceased in
primary school!
Unfortunately the
aptitudes that make good visual
practitioners often
seem mutual exclusive to
analytical technical skills
required to run a reliable
web-site. Out-sourcing one or
other functions is
a solution as long as it
is remember both skill-sets are
equally critical to a
quality web-site. As Phaedrus
painful realized
just because something can
not be directly measured does
not make it optional.
For a
detailed discussion of some of
the influence on visual
quality see 'The Necessity
of Art' by Ernst Fischer
(1959, reprinted as late
as 1986 by Peregrine). Fischer
dissects art as Medium,
Message and Magic. The concerns
of 'Medium' being the
technical considerations that
can be measured
and managed by a
conventional Quality Management
Systems. Message being the
content of the work, what it is
trying to say. Fischer's
'Magic' equating to
Pirsig's 'Dynamic Quality'
with just a dash of
'Static Quality'.
Conclusion
While cyberspace's
tsunami of change may at first
be scary, dutifully
prepared it promises an
exhilarating ride. Despite
the vagaries of software
suppliers there are solid
public standards to test
product claims by, and the
time-honed discipline
of Quality is as important
in cyberspace as anywhere it is
now applied. Nevertheless
the visual metamorphosing of
the web, obligates the
addition of visually trained
workers and appreciation
of the Metaphysics of Quality. For the further interested we can be found on the web at http://www.auzgnosis.com with
a few vrml samples and other
things J.
Reference & Resource.
W3C - the World Wide Web Consortium = http://www.w3.org/
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design = http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-10-mistakes-web-design/
The Web Standards Project: Fighting for Standards in our Browsers
= http://www.webstandards.org/
General Resources = http://archive.webstandards.org/mission.html
What are Web standards and why should I use them? = http://www.webstandards.org/learn/faq/l
Campaign for a Non-Browser Specific WWW = http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/
The SGML/XML Web Page = http://xml.coverpages.org/sgml-xml.html
Java = http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index.html
VRML Tutorials, Resources, and Books http://www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/vrml/
Xanadu-related Projects = http://www.xanadu.com.au/projects.html
"ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTANCE:An Inquiry Into Values"
© 1974 Robert M Pirsig pub. Corgi Books
"LILA: An Inquiry Into Morals" © 1991 Robert M Pirsig
pub. Corgi Books, ISBN 0-552-13894-0
'THE NECESSITY OF ART: A Marxist Approach' © 1959 Ernest Fisher,
pub. Penguin / Peregrine books, ISBN 0-14-055151-4
'THE ART OF COLOUR AND DESIGN' © 1951 Maitland Graves,
pub. McGraw-Hill Book Co.
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