The development of computer‐based tools to support ergonomics in design education and practice

Abstract

Ergonomics is not always used effectively by practising designers, and is still seen as limiting their creativity. Reasons for this include: ergonomics information is not presented in a readily assimilated form to designers during their design education and later design activities; design decisions relating to ergonomics issues are not addressed and discussed systematically by all members of the design team during concept design; the user centred approach that ergonomics encourages in design is not always included as part of the education of future designers.

With computers being used more widely in design and design education, they could be used to deliver ergonomics information and help structure discussion of ergonomics issues amongst the design team from the earliest stages of design. This paper describes findings relating to the use of ergonomics in automotive design, and proposes two tools which could enhance the use of ergonomics in design education and in current and future design practice.     

The integration of ergonomics into design—A review

This paper examines the role of ergonomics in product and systems design. Market requirements as well as legislation have increased the use of ergonomics in design. This has increased the demands upon both ergonomists and designers. The ergonomist must learn to participate in the product development team. In return the design team must find the time and resources necessary for the inclusion of ergonomics in the development programme. This paper discusses the different roles played by the ergonomist in each stage of product and systems design. The need to give designers, engineers and management a fundamental education in ergonomics is highlighted as is the need for the ergonomist to consider the financial consequences of his work.     

Contributions from cognitive engineering to requirements specifications for complex sociotechnical systems: A case study in the context of healthcare in Brazil

This paper aims at presenting a case study on the use of human factors and ergonomics to enhance requirement specifications for complex sociotechnical system support tools through enhancing the understanding of human performance within the business domain and the indication of high‐value requirements candidates to information technology support. This work uses methods based on cognitive engineering to build representations of the business domain, highlighting workers’ needs, and contributing to the improvement of software requirements specifications, used in the healthcare domain. As the human factors discipline fits between human sciences and technology design, we believe that its concepts can be combined with software engineering to improve understanding of how people work, enabling the design of better information technology.     

司钻控制房视觉工效评价研究

针对传统视觉工效评价中人工计算和作图误差的问题,在分析人体视野特性的基础上,引入了汽车视野设计原理中的眼椭圆和H点,结合计算机辅助人机工程设计技术,建立了石油钻机司钻控制房视觉工效评价模型。以CATIA作为二次开发平台,采用VB编制了司钻控制房视觉工效评价系统,实现了准确和快速定位不同百分位数人体模型眼位。最后,通过实例说明了系统的实用性,满足了司钻控制房人机界面布局可视化评估的要求。     

基于图库的机床人机工程设计方法研究及应用

应用人机工程学的知识组织并建立了内容丰富的系列化、标准化的操作件图库,提出了一种基于图库的机床人机工程设计方法,并借助于数据库技术、参数化技术以及AutoCAD的二次开发技术Arx开发了可直接用于典型机床操作件的人机设计软件模块。经实践证明,这种方法是可行的,并可应用于其他机电产品的设计中。     

基于功能面的产品布局与人机工程协同设计的研究

在产品概念设计中,布局设计和人机工程设计是两个相互影响和制约的设计过程,。为了将这种布局设计和人机工程设计协同起来,将功能面作为概念设计发解的依据,并在此基础上提出了基于功能面的协同概念设计过程和方法,以及布局设施 人机工程协同设计模型和形式化描述方法,最后结合摩托车的概念设计实例给出了一个计算机支持的布局和人机工程协同设计系统的实现方案。     

The integration of ergonomics into design—A review

Abstract

This paper examines the role of ergonomics in product and systems design. Market requirements as well as legislation have increased the use of ergonomics in design. This has increased the demands upon both ergonomists and designers. The ergonomist must learn to participate in the product development team. In return the design team must find the time and resources necessary for the inclusion of ergonomics in the development programme. This paper discusses the different roles played by the ergonomist in each stage of product and systems design. The need to give designers, engineers and management a fundamental education in ergonomics is highlighted as is the need for the ergonomist to consider the financial consequences of his work.     

A tool for early workstation design for small and medium enterprises evaluated in five cases

Five case studies on production line design were described to study the effect of an early design support tool. Based on these case studies, the simple, interactive, real‐time, medium‐fidelity, mixed‐reality methodology was not only found to be a good early design stage evaluative tool for ergonomics and workflow, but a teaching tool as well. Despite some drawbacks, such as limited accuracy, mixed‐reality simulation appears to be a good compromise between cost and fidelity, especially for small to medium‐sized manufacturing enterprises, and gives important information on the layout focused on high efficiency and healthy postures. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Integrating ergonomics and engineering in the technical design process

Leyland DAF and the University of Nottingham collaborated in establishing an ergonomics team to support the truck design and development process in the company. The project was planned within the framework of a Teaching Company Scheme funded jointly by Leyland DAF and the UK government. This framework provided a training environment in which the team, which was formed of young professional ergonomists and engineers, could quickly acquire the specialist skills needed for work in the automotive industry in addition to gaining practical experience in applying ergonomics, and the programme was structured to promote the integration of ergonomics and engineering considerations within the technical design process. The experience gained in this project has shown the benefits of such an approach to implementing ergonomics in product design, and provided an insight into the ways in which ergonomists and designers can communicate more effectively in a manufacturing organization.     

Virtual environments and ergonomics: needs and opportunities

Although based on a still immature technology, virtual environments appear to have potential for applications in industry, commerce, medicine and education. The role of ergonomics will be in development of improved virtual environment interfaces and in enabling better utilization of the technology through specifying user needs and requirements and developing evaluation methodologies. By extension, ergonomists will also be involved in building virtual environments for use in areas of ergonomics activity such as workplace layout, interface design, procedures testing, education and training. This paper overviews virtual environment attributes and capabilities and proposes a framework for their specification, development and evaluation, before summarizing current ergonomics research issues. Current work on participant side effects is summarized. A strong case is made for the potential value of ergonomics for virtual environments and vice versa.     

人机系统中视域评估的可视化

为了达到视域评估的可视化效果,文中构建了人眼可视范围的半透明模型,并绑定到虚拟人的骨骼中,通过驱动虚拟人,以实时混合绘制技术完成动态视域评估。以龙门式数控加工中心造型设计模型为对象进行实例仿真,结果表明逼真的可视化效果使得视域评估变得简单、快捷和直观,避免了大量的人工运算,提高了视域评估的速度、降低了人为失误。该方法可直接面向工程的实际应用,满足各类布局设计的可视化评估要求。     

基于H-anim的数字化人机设计研究*

为实现数字化人机工程,引入数字化人体模型来统一表达人机测量尺度、肢体动作特征和作业空间范围等人机要素,并提出基于H-anim的数字化人体建模方法,结合VRML原型节点建立了三维的,具有真实感的人体尺寸模型,利用EAI技术仿真人体动作行为。最后,以机床为对象,构建了计算机辅助人机设计系统,实现了操作空间的可见性、可及性与宜人性人机评价。     

A method for integrating ergonomics analysis into maintainability design in a virtual environment

Designers must consider human factors/ergonomics when making decisions from the perspective of maintainability. As an important aspect of maintainability, maintenance space should be made adequate at the design stage to achieve a convenient maintenance process. A maintenance space evaluation method that considers ergonomics is proposed in this study. By comparing free swept volumes and constrained swept volumes in a virtual environment, maintenance space could be evaluated quantitatively and objectively. The results of the evaluation are obtained by combining the principles of ergonomics and maintainability. These results can help designers improve product design such that it fits ergonomics and maintainability requirements. A case study is introduced at the end of this paper to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method in efficiently evaluating the maintenance space based on the layout design of the product components in the design stage.Relevant to industryFor a large number of disasters caused by human errors in current industry, the result of this study contributes a guide to fully consider human factors in maintainability design through virtual environment and is beneficial to designers and engineers of industrial application fields.     

New methodological framework to improve productivity and ergonomics in assembly system design

This work analyses how ergonomics and assembly system design techniques are intimately related. It also develops a new theoretical framework to assess a concurrent engineering approach to assembly systems design problems, in conjunction with an ergonomics optimization of the workplace. Its purpose is to provide professionals with a new and detailed approach to assembly system design procedures that includes ergonomics issues.The methodological framework offered takes into account technological variables (related to work times and methods), environmental variables (i.e. absenteeism, staff turnover, work force motivation) and ergonomics evaluations (i.e. human diversity) to create a comprehensive analysis.At conclusion of the study, the work reports data and insights from two real industrial cases, where an advanced simulation software is used, to validate the procedure and support methodology applicability.

Relevance to industries

This work provides an extremely valuable methodological framework to companies who recognize the link between assembly and ergonomics. The methodology underlines the necessity to analyze and classify the assembly system layout configuration in relation to both technological and environmental parameters- as reported in the framework.     

Is SA shared or distributed in team work? An exploratory study in an intelligence analysis task

This study compared two theoretical approaches to Situation Awareness (SA): the psychological school of thought and the systems ergonomics school of thought, by assessing measurement of team SA within these frameworks. Two teams were assigned and organised into either a traditional Hierarchy or a Peer-to-Peer organisational structure in a single case study design. Measures derived from the psychological and systems ergonomics perspectives were applied to assess their sensitivity for assessing team SA. No statistically significant differences were found between the two teams when measures originating in the psychological tradition were considered: differences were found, however, for measures originating in the systems ergonomics tradition. Literature concerned with team SA reveals a lack of consensus with regards to explaining the nature of the phenomenon as well as its measurement. This paper argues for a debate in the field to clarify what constitutes appropriate measurement techniques for team SA and suggests that these are taken from the systems ergonomics tradition, as suggested by the present studies findings.

Relevance to industry

Teams are a major feature of most industrial applications of work, and maintaining good situation awareness is important to successful performance. A method for examining the situation awareness of teams is proposed and compared with the individual models. Analysing the team as a functional unit of situation awareness is presented for future work.     

面向显示界面工效研究的飞机座舱仿真系统

显示界面工效研究通常以时间和正确率为指标记录分析被试的操纵过程,显示界面需要一定的柔性,现有飞行模拟器无法满足上述需求. 将飞行员操纵飞机的过程分解为信息输入、信息处理、信息输出,记录信息输入、输出变化的时刻及事件,供后续分析研究. 为实现上述要求,明确仿真系统的功能需求、功能模块得出系统总体框架. 详细阐述系统仿真模块、虚拟仪表模块、视景模块、通信模块、数据管理模块的设计过程. 实现并测试仿真系统,结果表明该仿真系统能够记录被试的信息输入、输出变化的时间及状态,满足显示界面工效研究的需要. 为研究显示界面工效问题提供了一种新手段.     

A field study of team working in a new human supervisory control system

This paper presents a case study of an investigation into team behaviour in an energy distribution company. The main aim was to investigate the impact of major changes in the company on system performance, comprising human and technical elements. A socio-technical systems approach was adopted. There were main differences between the teams investigated in the study: the time of year each control room was studied (i.e. summer or winter), the stage of development each team was in (i.e. < 3 months or > 10 months), and the team structure (i.e. hierarchical or heterarchical). In all other respects the control rooms were the same: employing the same technology and within the same organization. The main findings were: the teams studied in the winter months were engaged in more 'planning' and 'awareness' type of activities than those studies in the summer months. Newer teams seem to be engaged in more sharing of information than older teams, which may be indicative of the development process. One of the hierarchical teams was engaged in more 'system-driven' activities than the heterarchical team studied at the same time of year. Finally, in general, the heterarchical team perceived a greater degree of team working culture than its hierarchical counterparts. This applied research project confirms findings from laboratory research and emphasizes the importance of involving ergonomics in the design of team working in human supervisory control.     

Are online discussions enough to constitute communities of practice in professional domain? A case study of ergonomics’ practice in France

The goal of our research is to characterise how online discussions may provide support to the construction of a Virtual Community of Practice, as a way to develop a profession. To do so, we investigate the functions (sharing information, resources or experience) and the nature of knowledge (e.g. methodology and trends of ergonomics) exchanged on Ergoliste, a French-speaking online mailing list dedicated to ergonomics, as well as the status of participants. Our results reveal that the list has both informative and formative functions as it deals with sharing/seeking information, resources and experience, mainly between experts and novices in ergonomics, exchanging about situated and circumstantiated aspects of practices. Finally, these results are complemented by interviews with list participants which on the one hand confirm the main functions of the list and, on the other hand, reveal divergence in the perception that list participants belonging to a “community” structured only around this list. This research opens some prospects for more longitudinal investigations of the contents of the list, to analyse more deeply how the list can be viewed as an efficient tool to co-elaborate knowledge about ergonomics and its development.     

IssuePlayer: An extensible framework for visual assessment of issue management in software development projects

This article presents a software visualization framework which can help project managers and team leaders in overseeing issues and their management in software development. To automate the framework, a dashboard tool called IssuePlayer is developed. The tool is used to study the trends in which different types of issues (e.g., bugs, support requests) are submitted, handled and piled up in software projects and use that information to identify process symptoms, e.g., the times when the code maintenance team is not responsive enough. The interactive nature of the tool enables identification of the team members who have not been as active as they were expected to be in such cases. The user can play, pause, rewind and forward the issue management histories using the tool. The tool is empirically evaluated by two industrial partners in North America and Europe. The survey and qualitative feedback support the usefulness and effectiveness of the tool in assessing the issue management processes and the performance of team members. The tool can be used complementarily in parallel with textual information provided by issue management tools (e.g., BugZilla) to enable team leaders to conduct effective and successful monitoring of issue management in software development projects.     

Application of the QFD as a design approach to ensure comfort in using hand tools: Can the design team complete the House of Quality appropriately?

Quality Function Deployment is proposed as an effective design method to integrate ergonomics needs and comfort into hand tool design because it explicitly addresses the translation of customer needs into engineering characteristics. A crucial step during QFD concerns the linking of engineering characteristics to customer needs in the House of Quality by the design team. It is generally assumed (looking at all the QFD success stories) that design teams can accurately predict the correlations between customer needs and engineering characteristics (also referred to as “Whats”/“Hows” correlations). This paper explicitly tests this assumption by comparing the “Whats”/“Hows” correlations estimated by a design team with those observed in a systematic user evaluation study, which has not been done before. Testing the assumption is important, because inaccurate estimates may lead to ergonomically ineffective (re)design of hand tools and a waste of company resources. Results revealed that the design team's correlation estimates were not as accurate as is generally assumed. Twenty-five percent of the estimates differed significantly with those observed in the user evaluation study. Thus, QFD is a useful method to assist design teams in designing ergonomically more comfortable hand tools, but only on the condition that the correlations between customer needs and engineering characteristics are validated, preferably by means of a systematic user evaluation study.