Marcus is leaning against the polished limestone pillar, his thumb rhythmically clicking a heavy brass pen. From his vantage point in the lobby, he watches a woman in a charcoal coat attempt to navigate the main entrance. She has a toddler in her left arm and a grocery bag in her right. The door-a magnificent, three-meter slab of reinforced glass-requires exactly 13 pounds of pulling force to break the vacuum seal. She leans back, shifting her weight, nearly losing her footing on the marble floor that was buffed to a high shine at 4:03 AM. It’s a struggle that lasts only six seconds, but to Marcus, it feels like an hour. Someone behind him, a junior architect with a crisp white shirt and no calluses, scoffs and whispers that it’s an isolated issue, a user error. Marcus doesn’t blink. He knows the door wasn’t built for her. It was built for a ghost.

The Tyranny of Standard Stan

We are currently living in a world designed for a person who has never drawn a breath. This person-let’s call him Standard Stan-is exactly five-foot-nine, has 20/20 vision, possesses the grip strength of a professional climber, and is never, ever in a hurry. Stan doesn’t have arthritis. Stan doesn’t have a migraine. Stan isn’t trying to balance a leaking bag of milk while his phone vibrates with a frantic call from his boss. When we build systems, from door handles to digital interfaces, we are usually building them for Stan. And because Stan is a fantasy, the rest of us are left bruising our shoulders against doors that won’t budge and squinting at grey text on light-grey backgrounds.

I tried to go to bed early last night. I really did. At 10:03 PM, I was tucked in, eyes closed, ready to surrender. But then I started thinking about the light switch in my hotel room. To turn off the bedside lamp, I had to navigate a touch-sensitive panel that required three separate taps to wake up, followed by a long-press that flickered the light twice before dimming. It assumed I had the patience of a monk and the precision of a watchmaker in the dark. I ended up just unplugging the thing from the wall, nearly knocking over a glass of water in the process. It’s this specific brand of frustration-the gap between the designer’s intent and the user’s reality-that keeps me awake. We prioritize the aesthetic of the ‘clean’ interface over the messy, sweaty, clumsy reality of being alive.

“

Eva J.D., a typeface designer I’ve followed for years, once told me that the greatest sin in her industry isn’t ugliness; it’s arrogance. She spent 73 days straight refining the legibility of a new sans-serif intended for hospital signage. She didn’t just look at it on a high-resolution monitor in a climate-controlled studio. She printed it out, smeared the paper with Vaseline to simulate cataracts, and viewed it under the flickering fluorescent hum of a basement hallway. She knew that her ‘imaginary user’ wasn’t a graphic design student admiring the kerning; it was a terrified spouse looking for the emergency room at 2:03 AM while their eyes were blurred with tears.

– Eva J.D. (Typeface Designer)

The Statistical Lie of Averages

Eva’s process is rare because it’s expensive and exhausting. Most systems are built on the ‘Average User’ model, a statistical composite that represents everyone and therefore describes no one. If you design a stickpit for the average pilot, you design a stickpit that fits nobody perfectly. The seat is too far for the short and too close for the tall. We see this play out in our domestic spaces constantly. We install high-gloss tiles in bathrooms because they look ‘luxurious’ in a catalog, ignoring the fact that a bathroom is, by definition, a place where water meets gravity. We create environments that demand perfection from the inhabitant, and then we have the audacity to blame the inhabitant when they slip, trip, or fail to understand the instructions.

Edge Cases are Reality

There is a fundamental dishonesty in framing design failures as ‘edge cases.’ If a system works for Stan but fails for the elderly man with Parkinson’s, the mother with a stroller, or the teenager with a broken wrist, the system hasn’t encountered an edge case; it has encountered reality. The ‘normal’ user is a convenience for the manufacturer, a way to limit liability and production costs. But this narrow focus quietly narrows public dignity. Every time a person has to ask for help with a ‘simple’ task because the interface is too small or the physical barrier is too high, we are telling them they don’t belong in the space we’ve created.

I find myself getting irrationally angry at my own mistakes lately, like when I accidentally deleted a draft because the ‘Save’ and ‘Delete’ buttons were 3 millimeters apart. I’m tired, sure, but the software shouldn’t require me to be at peak cognitive performance just to perform a basic function. We need more friction in some places and less in others. We need doors that understand momentum. We need showers that don’t require a degree in fluid dynamics to operate when your eyes are full of soap. It’s about recognizing that the human body is a variable, not a constant.

This is why I’ve started appreciating companies that don’t just chase the trend of ‘invisible’ design, but instead embrace the tactile, the sturdy, and the intuitive. In the world of home renovation, for instance, the move toward wet rooms is a fascinating study in this. It removes the physical barrier of the curb-a classic ‘Stan’ feature that assumes everyone can lift their legs 10 inches without a thought. When you look at the design of a quality wet room shower, there’s a sense that the craftsmanship will understand the intersection of aesthetic ambition and the gritty, slippery reality of a Tuesday morning. A wet room screen isn’t just a piece of glass; it’s a refusal to force the user into a cramped, dangerous box. It acknowledges that sometimes, we need space to move, space to breathe, and a floor that doesn’t feel like an ice rink.

The Line That Keeps People Out

I think back to Marcus and the heavy door. Eventually, he walked over and propped it open with a decorative granite wedge. The junior architect looked horrified, complaining that it ruined the ‘line’ of the entryway. Marcus just grunted. He told the kid that a line that keeps people out isn’t an architectural feature; it’s a fence. He stayed there for 43 minutes, watching people flow in and out. The tension in the room evaporated. People stopped looking at their feet. They started looking at each other.

We are obsessed with ‘frictionless’ experiences, yet we build friction into the very fabric of our lives by ignoring the diversity of human capability. A system that assumes unlimited time and perfect eyesight is a system built for a god, or a ghost, but certainly not for us. I’ve spent $373 over the last year on ‘ergonomic’ gadgets that I eventually threw away because they were designed for someone with much smaller hands than mine. It’s a waste of resources, but more importantly, it’s a waste of human energy. We spend so much time fighting our environments that we have less energy to spend on the things that actually matter.

The New Principles of Inclusive Design

Eva J.D. once showed me a font she designed for a low-vision non-profit. It wasn’t ‘pretty’ in the traditional sense. It was clunky, with exaggerated openings and heavy stems. But when she put it on a screen and walked 23 feet away, it was the only thing I could read. ‘Beauty is a byproduct of utility,’ she told me, ‘not a replacement for it.’ I keep that thought in my pocket like a lucky coin. Whenever I see a ‘revolutionary’ new product that looks like a sleek silver monolith with no buttons, I find myself looking for the hidden cracks. I find myself looking for Stan.

Killing the Imaginary User

If we want to build a world that is actually inclusive, we have to start by killing the imaginary user. We have to design for the person who is exhausted, the person who is distracted, and the person whose body doesn’t fit the 50th percentile. We have to admit that we don’t know everything about how our work will be used. We have to build in redundancies. We have to leave room for the granite wedge.

It’s 1:03 AM now, and I’m still awake, writing this on a keyboard that has a slightly sticky ‘E’ key. It’s annoying, but it’s real. It reminds me that I’m here, interacting with a physical object that is decaying just as I am. There is a certain dignity in that struggle, but it shouldn’t be the baseline of our existence. We deserve better than to be guests in a world built for ghosts. We deserve environments that meet us where we are-tired, wet-handed, and slightly clumsy-and say, ‘It’s okay. I was expecting you.’