Esthetic appeal of a product is often affected by the appearance quality of seams forming between components of the product. The appearance quality of seams is, however, assessed in a very subjective and qualitative manner that heavily depends on the evaluator. This paper presents a preliminary study to quantify such assessment by formulating a quantitative index which is a linear function of the seam gap sizes, seam gap ranges, and the size uniformity of seam gaps. By considering a highly simplified problem of a drawer system and utilizing subjective assessments by twenty evaluators, the index has been formulated. The validity of this index has been confirmed by observing its behavior with changes of the component tolerances. Also, the utility of this index has been demonstrated through a selective assembly scheme applied to the drawer system problem. Though the index formulated in this study for seam appearance quality may be useful, future studies are necessary to make the model readily applicable to real problems.