Designing for Average doesn’t fit anyone

Books, Design, Thought Provoking

From  thestar.com a story of how the US Air Force discovered a design flaw

It is an excerpt from a new book The End of Average by Todd Rose.

Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all 10 dimensions. One pilot might have a longer-than-average arm length, but a shorter-than-average leg length. Another pilot might have a big chest but small hips. Even more astonishing, Daniels discovered that if you picked out just three of the ten dimensions of size — say, neck circumference, thigh circumference and wrist circumference — less than 3.5 per cent of pilots would be average sized on all three dimensions. Daniels’s findings were clear and incontrovertible. There was no such thing as an average pilot. If you’ve designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you’ve actually designed it to fit no one.

This is similar to material that I have read in some copy-writing books recently. Target a specific person and not to a general audience for a product.

Here is the book mentioned.