They have found the bra part of it to be especially difficult because of how hard the sizing is. There are bust and band measurements as used in these sorts of calculators, but at the end of the day the breasts themselves just have different shapes. I'm surprised that these sorts of calculators don't take that into account by having the user first pick their specific "archetype", e.g. from a set of images. I wonder if that's what abrathatfits.org is doing by getting measurements in different positions to better capture the shape. Still, I wonder if this could be accomplished more simply.
Anyways this can be tough for a startup given the higher return rates and more hesitation when buying bras. They've found success in offering flexibly fitting bralettes made of stretchy materials (e.g. micromodal). This sort of sidesteps the fitting issue because the fit doesn't need to be as exact. The downside is that for some women a bralette doesn't provide enough support (no wire, no padding).
> I'm surprised that these sorts of calculators don't take that into account by having the user first pick their specific "archetype", e.g. from a set of images.
They can't. Unfortunately, until a woman is in a properly sized bra, it's pretty much impossible to actually have the information needed to determine said archetype. It's REALLY hard to visually eye breast roots, especially on larger women, and in addition a lot of the archetypes are relative (for example, knowing if you have short roots means you have to know what a 'average height' or 'tall' root would look like). You also can only tell your archetype while wearing a bra because supported breasts behave differently than breasts au natural.
As an example, I have very, very close-set breasts - I need low gores because when I'm in a bra, there's literally no separation between tissue. However, braless you can't tell this at all - it's an interaction between the wire, fabric tension, and my body. Which is why you need a properly fitting bra to tell: Otherwise the wire isn't sitting in the right place and won't be interacting with the tissue in the same way. And close-set versus wide-set is one of the easier things for a woman to determine on her own.
What about a physics simulation to back into those parameters? Given a front and side image without wearing a bra are there really so many different archetypes that can produce the resulting shape?
So off the top of my (not entirely sober) head at the moment:
- Tall vs. short vs. average height breast root
- Wide vs. narrow vs. average width breast root
- Breast root separation (also wide, narrow, average)
- Tissue density and malleability (some women have tissue that can work with a variety of bras whereas some [like me] have tissue that is pretty dense and will resist any shaping efforts by the bra)
- Tissue distribution/Tissue fullness (upper fullness vs. lower fullness for a total of four quadrants): Full upper and shallow bottom [very rare outside of situations like lumpectomies], shallow upper and shallow bottom, shallow upper and fuller bottom, full upper and full bottom.
- Ribcage shape (some women have barrel shaped ribcages or pectus excavatum plus those who have less padding/are on the smaller band size range and therefore no/less fat to smooth out the bumps can have this cause fit issues)
The primary difficulties are the UX/end user complexity problem AND the fact that those different archetypes can produce the same visual or physical results.
For instance, being able to tell if a cup is too big or too tall or whether a cup is too closed on top or too small can be really difficult even for humans. Does the gore not tack because the breasts are too close-set or because the cup is too small? Etc.
And yeah, images not in a bra would be useless because there are literally physics forces acting on the tissue when it's in a bra versus not that change things. For example, pendulous breasts would not scan as having any upper fullness at all, but when the root is supported, upper fullness is possible and therefore needs to be considered in fit. There's information that's necessary to a proper fit which literally cannot be gathered from a nude look/scan.
From a UX/customer service perspective, most women don't understand the sizing chart. Adding extra variables isn't going to work well, especially without hard and fast rules to follow. Even asking women to wear a well fitting bra at home won't solve basic user error problems such as women forgetting to scoop and swoop all their tissue in.
I read this out to my girlfriend (as well as a few other responses of yours in this thread) and had to ask for clarification on a lot of the terminology (roots, tack, gore - ha, neat!). She designs and sews all of their products herself, and helps some women with fitting but she isn't a bra fitter. We both found your comments very interesting. Thank you!
So a physics simulation would need to include the shape and density distribution of the breasts. Hypothetically, it would then be able to simulate dozens of bras with reference sizes and how this would look (i.e. an image output). At this point an expert system trained on images of good vs bad fit could probably visually recognize common problems and return a few of the best bras. This is probably oversimplifying, and it's already too complicated to actually be done, so I think it's not the right approach.
Do you see any aspect of bra fitting which _would_ benefit from technology? i.e. some kind of specialized fitting tool
Bra fitting, no. It's a surprisingly hands on process (one reason I picked it up first as a side hustle was 'oooh automation proof work').
Bra production absolutely. There are certain markets of women who are almost completely neglected when it comes to well fitting bras. Large band small bust (40+ A-D) are completely screwed by the good bra brands. Same for women who are under a 28 or 30 band. The economics just don't make sense for the brands to produce those sizes. Also bras for elderly women or the disabled that have more hooks, rely less on tension, etc. and basically accommodate for mobility or sight limitations.
Where I think tech could be very helpful is marrying JIT manufacturing with CNC fabric cutting to produce single bras or small batches for this economic 'long tail'. Think 1 hour glasses stores where you could go in, get fit, and just have one made if you happen to be one of the neglected demographics.
Sway isn't written in Rust, all C as far as I know. It's really great though! Highly recommend it if you're looking for a minimalistic and very practical window manager.
MySQL 8.0 actually added support for functional indexes, but I found out the hard way that they don't work the same way as indexing generated columns. For me the biggest issue were the caveats around using the indexed column in conditions, which resulted in the index not being used in surprising situations. Anyways, I had to revert to generated columns which was a shame because it was a feature I had looked forward to using.
I personally like that Lex asks things like that. He has a pretty unique style which sometimes gets you some philosophical questions, but he also doesn't take things too seriously, so I think even a humorous response would do the trick.
I found Jim's responses to be at times rude or dismissive and thought that was a bit disrespectful.
I think you must have missed it because the author mentions several times that it is more important to evaluate the individual.
Here:
> First and foremost, I think this requires a recognition that none of the findings I presented in this article, nor any findings that will ever come out-- justifies individual discrimination. We should treat all people as unique individuals first and foremost.
Here:
> I am a strong believer that individual differences are more important than sex differences.
And here, on the topic of male-female classification based on whole brain data:
> In fact, some recent studies using the most sophisticated techniques have consistently found greater than 90% accuracy rates looking at whole brain data. While this level of prediction is definitely not perfect-- and by no means do those findings justify individual stereotyping or discrimination-- that's really high accuracy as far science goes.
No, I didn't miss any of those remarks. But I did note they were drowned in rhetoric to the opposite. I could go further, but I'd be just repeating things I've said in other comments.
Can someone provide more insight into what this refers to? There are definitely less formal or technical sounding word variants in German, and of course duzen/siezen to add another level of formality, so I'm not sure what this could refer to.
The other comment is not quite right, a ‘language register’ is not a dialect, even though apparently the whole classification is difficult and imprecise due to the nature of languages as a continuum. A ‘language register’ means a variant, choice of words, that are used in specific situations or settings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)
So, afaiu an ‘informal register’ would be something like brospeak or language spoken at home and among friends, contrasted to that spoken with strangers and at work. But I don't know what the situation is in German. With English and Russian, every generation and each subculture invents their own slang just to differentiate themselves―can't imagine how any country would avoid developing informal language, considering the existence of Oktoberfest.
I'd assume it's about the dialects, which are very different from the "official" language, so much that Jerome K. Jerome had a joke in one of his books, more than century ago:
"Germany being separated so many centuries into a dozen principalities, is unfortunate in possessing a variety of dialects. Germans from Posen wishful to converse with men of Wurtemburg, have to talk as often as not in French or English; and young ladies who have received an expensive education in Westphalia surprise and disappoint their parents by being unable to understand a word said to them in Mechlenberg."
"Modern times" and technologies suppress the dialects and with each generation the portion of the local-specific dialects is being lost.
In German, speaking in different registers actually changes the verb grammatically. Kanst du vs Können Sie vs Könnten Sie.
Could you (low register to someone of equal or lower status) vs Could you (medium register to someone of higher status) vs Might you (highest register to someone of higher status). In English I had to change to a different verb, non grammatically. In German these are all the same verb with a different rule applied.
I like this idea a lot! It would also be neat to just distribute the material from certain core subjects like history across several other courses. So in history you're learning about the Ottoman Empire and in home ec preparing börek. Or WW2 in history and cryptography in computers class.
https://tizzandtonic.com/
They have found the bra part of it to be especially difficult because of how hard the sizing is. There are bust and band measurements as used in these sorts of calculators, but at the end of the day the breasts themselves just have different shapes. I'm surprised that these sorts of calculators don't take that into account by having the user first pick their specific "archetype", e.g. from a set of images. I wonder if that's what abrathatfits.org is doing by getting measurements in different positions to better capture the shape. Still, I wonder if this could be accomplished more simply.
Anyways this can be tough for a startup given the higher return rates and more hesitation when buying bras. They've found success in offering flexibly fitting bralettes made of stretchy materials (e.g. micromodal). This sort of sidesteps the fitting issue because the fit doesn't need to be as exact. The downside is that for some women a bralette doesn't provide enough support (no wire, no padding).