The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

by Todd Rose

Rather than suggesting that people should strive harder to conform to an artificial ideal of normality, Daniels’s analysis led him to a counterintuitive conclusion that serves as the cornerstone of this book: Any system designed around the average person is doomed to fail.

The recommended change was radical: the environments needed to fit the individual rather than the average.

By discarding the average as their reference standard, the air force initiated a quantum leap in its design philosophy, centered on a new guiding principle: individual fit.

Molenaar recognized that the fatal flaw of averagarianism was its paradoxical assumption that you could understand individuals by ignoring their individuality.