Ergonomics

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Ergonomics

• What is ergonomics?

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What is ergonomics?

• Ergonomics is the study of the interaction of
  man and his environment
• From the Greek Ergon work and nomos meaning
  natural laws. In other words the natural laws of
  humans doing work.
• Ergonomics can be divided into the following
  areas
• Physical and Psychological ergonomics
• Cognitive ergonomics and
• Organisational ergonomics

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Physical Ergonomics

• How the body responds to physical and
  psychological stresses.
• For example
• physical ergonomics means a product is designed
  so that it is not too heavy, or uncomfortable or
  too big or too small, or designed to minimise
  this physical stresses. This arm of ergonomics is
  called ANTHROPOMETRICS.

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Psychological Ergonomics

• For example
• psychological ergonomics means a product is
  designed considering how the user will interact
  with it and use it. Can they understand its use
  intuitively. Psychology is the study of
  behaviour.

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Cognitive Ergonomics

• also known as engineering psychology, concerns
  mental processes such as perception, attention,
  cognition, motor control, and memory storage and
  retrieval as they affect interactions among
  humans and other elements of a system.
• Relevant topics include mental workload,
  vigilance, decision making, skilled performance,
  human error, human-computer interaction, and
  training.

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Organisational Ergonomics

• ... or macro ergonomics, is concerned with the
  optimisation of sociotechnical systems, including
  their organisational structures, policies, and
  processes.
• Relevant topics include shift work, scheduling,
  job satisfaction, motivational theory,
  supervision, safety culture, teamwork, telework
  and ethics.

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Anthropometrics

• From the Greek anthro man and metrics
  measurements
• Literally means the measurement of humans.
• Today, anthropometry plays an important role in
  industrial design, clothing design, and
  architecture, where statistical data about the
  distribution of body dimensions in the population
  are used to optimize products

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Anthropometrics

• Imagine you are designing a computer desk
• You need to study the interaction of the person
  with the computer (ergonomics) and then the sizes
  of people who use the desk (anthropometrics).
• Both of these pieces of information will help you
  draw up a specifcation.

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Anthropometrics
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Anthropometric table
Female Female Female Male Male Male
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
  5 50 95 5 50 95
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
A 690 743 795 739 795 850
B 181 226 266 188 235 274
C 406 439 479 447 482 520
D 438 478 525 458 499 544
E 540 585 637 569 616 665
F 352 388 428 395 434 476
G 474 513 558 515 559 605
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Anthropometric table

• The data was gathered by measuring 1000 or more
  people and recording the frequency of each piece
  of data.
• A frequency graph can then be plotted for each
  piece of data, for example seated height F
• The distribution of the graph will have a bell
  shaped curve which is called a normal
  distribution curve.

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Normal distribution curve
Frequency
Frequency graph for seated height F
Heights
5
50
95
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Normal distribution curve
Mean
Frequency
If you design for the MEAN you only design for
50 of the population.
Heights
5
50
95
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Normal distribution curve
Frequency
Design for 90 of the population means your
product will be suitable for 90 of people. So
you use the 95 percentile figure to include in
your specification
Heights
5
50
95
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Normal distribution curve
Frequency
Sometimes it isnt possible to design for 90 of
the population as the extremes maybe too far
apart. In this case you can design for 50 of the
population, but between 25th and 75th percentile.
Heights
25
50
75
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Ergonome

• You can make a model of a 2D person to help guide
  your designing
• A word file has been created of a 50th percentile
  adult man
• Cut him out assemble him and try him on scale
  drawings
• He is 1/10th full scale.

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Useful sites

• http//www.ergonomics4schools.com/lzone/workspace.
  htm