Ergonomics and Anthropometrics

Question 1

What are Ergonomics?

Answer 1

• The study of how well and comfortably people can interact with products and systems.
• Ergonomics is an essential part of product design, using ergonomics should improve the peoples lives when using products by increasing their comfort and satisfaction.

Question 2

How would you use ergometrucs to make a toothbrush?

Answer 2

• the toothbrush is shaped to have a better grip
• can be used by children
• can be used by right and left handed people

Question 3

What are Anthropometrics?

Answer 3

• Is the practice of taking measurements of the human body and provides categorised data that can be used by designers.
• Anthropometrics help designers collect useful data, eg head circumferences when designing a safety helmet.

Question 4

How should designers use anthropometric data?

Answer 4

● Designers should use anthropometric data to help make sure a product will be comfortable for the user.
● It is difficult to design a product that everyone will be able to use with comfort, so products are often designed for the majority of the population.
● This data is taken from measurements of hundreds of volunteers and is normally recorded as percentiles.

Question 5

What percentile is concidered the ‘majority’ of the population?

Answer 5

As its difficult to design a product that everyone products are often designed for the majority of the population, considered to be between the 5th and 95th percentile.