"In the 1950s, the Air Force designed cockpits for the average pilot by measuring thousands of pilots and calculating the average for ten key physical dimensions - height, arm length, torso size, etc. When researchers actually checked, they found that out of 4,063 pilots, exactly zero were average on all ten dimensions. Not a single pilot fit the average they'd designed for."
"Designing for the average driver creates a phantom user - a person who materializes inside their vehicle, drives, and dematerializes upon arrival. This ghost never walks across a street, never uses a bicycle or scooter, never uses a downtown circulator bus, and only makes long trips. The ghost is capable of seeing and hearing everything, is always alert and sober."
The Air Force once designed cockpits using averages of ten physical dimensions and assumed most pilots would be close to average. Researchers later found that out of 4,063 pilots, zero matched the average across all ten dimensions, and fewer than 5% matched even three dimensions. Designing for an average produced cockpits that fit virtually no one and compromised performance and safety. The solution was to design adjustable controls and for the full range of human variation. Many American transportation systems replicate this error by assuming an imaginary average driver who never walks, ages, or has impairments.
Read at Streetsblog
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