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The age of average

alexmurrell.co.uk

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Re: The age of average

#481

Post by conradkay »

danaris wrote: post #440
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Very few are made and sold in yellow because dealers don't spec them that way Dealers aren't speccing them yellow because they don't sell as well as other colors. If people were lining up for yellow Porsches, dealers would absolutely be ordering more yellow Porsches. Odd colors may be priced differently at the top of the market for used cars (I don't know), but that's just not true for the typical car used buyer.

The problem isn't that fewer unusual colors are made. The problem is that no unusual colors are made in almost all car models. There are a very small handful of models that have a few particular colors beyond the basic black/white/red/silver/dark blue options, but otherwise manufacturers have decided that because fewer people want yellow (or bright blue, or pink, or orange, or magenta), no one gets those colors. Ever…

Even the new Miata's color options are gray-scale, red, very dark blue, and sand. Worth mentioning that you can just buy wraps for wacky colors while protecting your paint and resale value, maybe that's part of it.

Re: The age of average

#482

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

trgn wrote: post #474
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing stopped people from enjoying hiking 50 years ago with bad gea we can't prove it's the gear, and it is likely not to be the dominant factor, but vastly more people do in fact participate in this sor of activity today than they did 50 years, so i would argue that actually, gear did play a role in "stopping people from enjoying hiking". Not "all people", but some people. however, i feel that you're overly focu…

maybe it's tautological. convergence is a euphemism for the downstream effects of prioritizing efficiency and simplicity due to mass manufacturing.

convergence can be that.

but convergence can also just be ... convergence. People can actually agree that there's a better/best way to do something independent of other motivations.

Re: The age of average

#483

Post by thomastjeffery »

411111111111111 wrote: post #454
thomastjeffery wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never made any claims about phones. That was all you. If you want an example of what I'm talking about, look here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ergomechkeyboards/ Keyboards don't inherently need to have the keys laid out like a typewriter. Most people are only willing to use a keyboard that is , because that is what they already developed their muscle memory for. That's the motivation behind the conformity I'm talking…

I get where you're coming from and it'd definitely agree that the average keyboards has strongly converged on a standardized layout. Nonetheless, there isn't a single layout. You got ANSI and ISO as the big branching standards with adjustments to bindings and added keys for various extra letters/modifiers depending on the localization. And yes, i brought up the phone example to illustrate how they're only superficial…

> I get where you're coming from and it'd definitely agree that the average keyboards has strongly converged on a standardized layout.

They didn't converge: that was my whole point. They never diverged (significantly) from the original typewriter. All of the letter keys are in the same relative position.

Where to place function and return was a new question (the typewriter didn't have those), so naturally that aspect actually had variance until converging on a few standards.

Take one look at a dactyl, and you can see what I mean.

Re: The age of average

#486

Post by anurag_baddam »

One thing that's not captured in this discussion is that design trends change a lot even if they converge in a given time period. I remember at one point all of my friends had a colorful personal website full of interactive bootstrap components. Now, they all favor a minimal design with just links to their resume/socials.

Re: The age of average

#487

Post by zymhan »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #433
wongarsu wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freshwater, sewage, fire codes, elevators, foundations, load-bearing structures, HVAC all get more difficult as you add more floors (beyond some small number around 4 where it's all pretty trivial). Another advantage 5-over-1s have (which the NYT article also mentions) is that they are cheap and easy to build. Very tolerant to cheap building materials, lots of prefabricated parts, lots of contractors who are familiar…

> lots of contractors who are familiar with how to build them that's a bit circular, no?

Yes, that's how economies of scale work

Re: The age of average

#488

Post by zestyping »

bumby wrote: post #139
crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

I've tried making this same point when it comes to auto designs (at least in the competitive, cost-sensitive ones). A lot of mid-sized cars look the same because the design constraints generally converge on the same handful of principles. They've converged not in the aesthetic sense as much as the engineering sense: because they work at a relatively low cost. (I'm speaking mainly about things like aerodynamics here,…

In the United States, size is one attribute in which cars have not converged.

Cars keep growing bigger, for no sensible reason. That demand was created by aggressive marketing (encouraging Americans to attach their egos to their cars) and fearmongering (people feeling the need to get larger cars to protect themselves from other, ever larger cars).

Re: The age of average

#489

Post by arendtio »

crazygringo wrote: post #123

What the article describes is correct, but I don't think the words "average" or "homogeneity" or "conformity" are the right terms, as they seem to carry negative connotations here. Rather, the right word is "convergence". The point is, people like certain things aesthetically. It used to be that artists and designers were still trying to figure out what looks good, and trying all the things. But now we've tried so ma…

My guess is, that the global transparency about products and designs provided by the modern internet accelerated this convergence.

Re: The age of average

#490

Post by thomastjeffery »

epups wrote: post #456
thomastjeffery wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are precisely the consumer demand that drives conformity here. You are real! That doesn't change any of the other things I just said: in fact, it exasperates the issue, because it isn't wrong to target your familiarity as a reliable selling point. The problem is that it's also a good thing to try create new designs. I have a keyboard that you would hate to use. That's how I feel about the traditional design you p…

For almost every product out there, a "better" version is available that is not the most common one. This is simple economics: the improvements you describe are not free, which is why they are not mass produced. If people judged that these improvements that you describe are worth it to them, they would pay. The fact you could buy such a keyboard demonstrates that conformity or convergence or whatever you want to call…

They weren't even minimally produced until recently!

If any "better versions" were actually a real part of the market 20 years ago, then you could buy a laptop with one today. You can't. In a $140 billion market, there is not a single laptop manufacturer producing laptops with an ergonomic or ortholinear layout. That can only be the result of conformity.

> The fact you could buy such a keyboard demonstrates that conformity or convergence or whatever you want to call it did not inhibit you from getting what you want.

Not 4 years ago, but it certainly did 10-20 years ago. They simply didn't exist back then.

And it's not a binary, either: just because there is one company mass-producing one does not mean the problem is resolved. We are talking about one of the most commonly produced objects in the world. Practically every single computer (bigger than a hand) that has ever been made has a traditional typewriter-style keyboard!

And the fact I (and many others) an willing to pay >$300 for one is clear evidence that the market for ergonomic keyboards is incredibly diluted. If I could buy a poor quality one for $30, I would do it in a heartbeat. The average traditional typewriter-style costs well under $1 to produce. Starting that kind of production scale would take a huge investment.

The fact that no one has tried once in the last 30 years to mass produce a cheap non-typewriter keyboard design is proof that conformity, and not convergence is the deciding factor.

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