Anthropometrics and Ergonomics (11/2)
Our guest lectures returned with Wayne Chung on Monday. Wayne is currently an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies here at Carnegie Mellon. A lot of his work and research revolves around Industrial Design. Starting with a lecture and ending with a Sketch activity, we explored reasons why anthropometrics and ergonomics are important in design.
To begin, Wayne went over a historical rundown of anthropometrics and ergonomics. To summarize, anthropometry focuses on the physical human body measurements by systematically measuring human bodies. Ergonomics is the study of the fit between people and their relationship with an object and/or environment. Though ergonomics can be separated into a few routes, we focused on physical ergonomics in class and how our human body can respond to physical and physiological work demands.
To learn more about the human body in a designer’s view, Wayne recommended a few books and resources.
- The Measure of Man and Woman: Human Factors in Design
- Human Dimension and Interior Space: A Source Book of Design Reference Standards
- Bodyspace: Anthropometry, Ergonomics and the Design of Work, Third Edition
- Open Design Lab
With these resources, we have a large range of data at our disposal. It’s a great asset for all sorts of projects as a reference for physical attributes of people of all races and gender. Wayne pointed out that when we design, we think about our audience to create the best experience for them. We can obtain information through these resources. For example, if we were to design for a certain country, race or gender, we can specifically look at the physical data there and adjust to their specifications.
As we had a quick look through of these resources, we learned that design for the average person is not inclusive. As shown in his presentation, the mean averages for physical features such as height are significantly different for men and women. Designing for the average usually encompasses 60% of the population. This is bound to leave many people out.
Why is this data important? If we understand the human body and its physical features such as the length of a body part or the wingspan of an arm, we can create design proposals more suited for the human body. This can make the product or design more intuitive and comfortable for the user. Wayne brought up several work experiences to illustrate this point ranging projects. As a designer, we want to know the sweet spots, and to do that, it would be helpful the average size of a hand or arm in relation to the size of the device. This can also be applied to UI in apps and homepages. This information helps us to create interactions that are intuitive and the sweet spots.
The remainder of the class ended with a classroom activity on making a chair based on our peers’s physical features like the height and width. With only five chairs to compare with, we already begin to see the differences between each person and their ideal chair. There’s data but this doesn’t always tell the complete story. Knowing this information in the future, a designer can keep this in mind and have a larger range for adjustable seat height. We’ll continue with these topics on Wednesday!
