Your average user doesn't exist

I've spent 14 years designing for "typical users." The persona, the journey map, the P50 use case. It's how design has always been taught.

Digital behavior doesn't follow a bell curve. Most users barely engage. A tiny group at P95 to P99 generates almost all the business value.

When you optimize for the average, you optimize for a ghost. You miss the features that make your product indispensable to the people who actually pay for it.

Before your next design review, pull the usage data. Find your top 5% of users. Look at what they do that others don't. Design one thing specifically for them. Then watch what happens to retention.