Quality and Safety

Quality in Design and Materials

Visual Quality: Noticing blemishes, colour variations or any other visual defects can indicate the quality of a material.
Tactile Quality: Feel and touch of a material lead to conclusions about its quality, like rough or smooth texture, warmth or coolness etc.
Auditory Quality: The sound made on striking certain materials can also denote their quality, for example, the sound of good quality timber is different from that of poor quality timber.
Quality Control: Involves techniques and processes that ensure the delivered product or service meets specified requirements. It is reactive in nature, fixing defects after they are detected.
Quality Assurance: Aims to prevent defects by focusing on the process used to deliver the product or service. It is proactive, aiming to maintain and improve the design and production processes.

Safety in Design and Materials

Material Safety: Material should not be hazardous to health in normal use, e.g., non-toxic, not emitting harmful radiation or gases and should not be highly inflammable.
Structural Safety: Design must be structurally safe to prevent accidents due to collapse, falling, tilting, sliding, etc.
Functional Safety: The design must perform its intended function safely. For example, electrical appliances should not cause electric shocks under normal usage.
Safety Regulations: Conformance to safety rules and regulations is an absolute necessity for safety. Each field/industry has specific safety regulations to be followed.
Emergency Preparedness: Materials and design should ensure safety even in the event of emergency situations, like fire, power failure, etc.

Balancing Quality and Safety

Quality Safety Trade-off: In certain situations, there might be a need to compromise on quality factors for safety and vice versa, which needs careful consideration.
Compromise Decision: Such decisions are based on the criticality of usage, potential harm and cost implications, taken with proper rationale and validation.
Testing and Validation: Rigorous testing and validation are required to ensure both the quality and safety of the designed product or service.
Risk Assessment: Effective risk assessment strategies can help predict and measure the potential risks associated with use of certain materials and designs and directly contribute to safety considerations.
Standards: Compliance to established standards will ensure proper balance between quality and safety in material and design processes.