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Big tech has this uni-modal aporoach to users: they find what maximizes a metric, and works for 75% of the users, but roll it out to 100%. Dealing with the remaining 25% would have low ROI.



Not only tech. Try finding shoes or pants when your size is 1.5 times sigma away from the mean.


As a 5’5 dude buying clothes from American brands is often hilarious. I bought an xs nike trail running tshirt and it’s a good 5 inches too long in the body.


I'm a 6'6" dude and I feel your pain. Every time I get company swag, the best they can offer me is a super wide belly shirt :(


Small people can use child size, which is usually much cheaper for the same thing.

Large people are out of luck.

But your point still holds, it is just that if you include children, small sizes don't follow a normal distribution, large sizes do.


I never understood this one size fits all approach of a lot of companies. Controlled opposition would often result in higher market penetration and more net happiness


Mr Smarty Pants has the solution for all cameras to be 100% accurate 100% of the time pleasing 100% of the users. How humble of you to chat with us here on HN. /s

You sound like you have not dealt with humans at the scale of the number of smart phone users. I've never dealt with the numbers of something like an iPhone, but over the course of my career have had multiple SKUs totaling over 1 million units. No matter what, there are always "people on the internet" that are dissatisfied enough to go online to voice their opinions. That's the only 100% is that there will always be someone unhappy for whatever reason(s).




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