The following is the 1st part of an exclusive Impact Lab series called the Twelve Trends of Christmas by Thomas Frey. Title: Anthropometric Disaster Zones
Thomas Frey: The size and shape of people in America is changing. In general, people in the US have become taller, heavier, and generally more rotund.
Anthropometry is the science behind the study of human dimensions, tracking all of the migratory shifts in such things as clothing size, height, and the greasy-food impact upon our weight.
People during Biblical times were nearly a foot shorter than today, but height varies greatly by race and by region. As an example, the average man in the US today is 5’10” while the average man in Vietnam or North Korea is 5’4”.
In general, weight for all ages, sex, and races is rising rapidly. Adult men and women in the US are roughly an inch taller than they were in 1960, but are also nearly 30 pounds heavier on average. The average weight for adult men rose dramatically from 166.3 pounds in 1960 to 191 pounds in 2002. Similariy, the average weight for women the same age increased from 140 pounds in 1960 to 164.3 pounds in 2002
Because of the upward shift in human dimensions, we are at a point where we need larger facilities to accommodate people, and here’s the rub. Architects have been working with outdated anthropometric tables in the design of many of our public facilities.
Accommodations for large crowds need to be expanded and the seating areas need to fit a majority of our population. Currently they don’t. The most obvious points of friction show up on airlines, in stadiums, on cruise ships, and in theaters.
Two local examples of anthropometric disaster zones are the Denver Pepsi Center and the new Broomfield Event Center in Broomfield, CO. Seating is so tight that many big people refuse to endure the high price of discomfort.
In the near future we will see a number of large public facilities declared “anthropometric disaster zones” and be forced to go through expensive remodeling, installing larger seats and creating more leg room in order to regain the audiences that are beginning to dwindle away.
Airlines and cruise ships will start to see themselves rated on comfort scales as a way to sensitize the industry of how this truly will affect the bottom line.
The Great Airline Challenge – Most airline seats today fit Steve Martin’s description of footwear in his book Cruel Shoes – a cruel an unusual form of punishment inflicted upon passengers. However, most of the new movie theaters are getting it right – large comfortable seats with plenty of room. The primary point of physical interface that we have with a movie theater is the seat that we sit in, same as an airline.
Ignoring for the moment the outrageous assumptions that airline executives make about people’s need for leg space and just focusing on the overall comfort of the seat, we would like to offer this challenge to the airlines.
Pick a modern movie theater of your choice and work an agreement with the owner of that theater to replace some of the theater seats with airline seats. Direct some video cameras to capture the decision-making process of in-coming movie patrons. Keep experimenting with different seats until you find a seat that theatergoers actually prefer over the standard theater seats.
Once you find this super-comfortable seat, replace all the seats in your airline, add a couple inches of leg room and let the world know.
To begin with, every blogger and podcaster in the world will want to cover this story because you will have achieved the uber-comfort, total zen-state of air travel. Likewise every newspaper, magazine, and television station in the world will cover this story.
The airline executive credited with making this choice will be named TIME Magazine “Person of the Year”. That person will also win the Nobel Peace Prize because it can be argued very effectively that most wars today are fought because people traveling overseas to a particular country are so uncomfortable that “they just want to kill someone” when they get there.
ABOUT: Thomas Frey is currently Google’s Top Rated Futurist Speaker. He serves as the Senior Futurist and Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute. For more information click here.
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