Because none of us is average

In the late 1940s, the US Airforce faced a serious and mysterious problem: its pilots were losing control of their planes and crashing. On one single day they lost seventeens. Yet no human or mechanical error could be identified.

Officials turned their focus to the cockpit design, which had been based on the average dimensions of pilots during 1926. With a hypothesis that pilots must have increased in size, they gathered data from 4,063 pilots, measuring hands, legs, waists, foreheads, height, chest circumference and sleeve length, to calculate a new average for the ten physical dimensions believed to be the most relevant for design.

That was until the new average dimensions were compared against the raw data to identify the number of pilots that fit into the 'average' dimensions. Rather than to include most pilots, the average dimensions included no-one. Every pilot was compensating for the cockpit design in some way.

So the Airforce threw away the idea of designing the perfect cockpit for the average pilot, and instead designed for every pilot. They created adjustable controls, adjustable flying suits, adjustable controls and adjustable seats. Pilot performance dramatically soared, and the unseen effect? - The new fit-to-the-individual cockpits not only meant that male pilots of all physical dimensions could perform at peak, it also meant that the other half of the population - women - could fly for the airforce too.

None of us are ‘average’ and none of us are ‘most people’. In the age of the individual, who are you designing for?