I am giving a presentation on Ergonomics and Design. I have a pretty good idea of it, but if anyone has any suggestion of either imagery or text it would be greatly appreciated.
A presentation by whom for whom?
The presentation is by me, to students. So any references should be basic and fundamental.
And you are another student? a professor? a professional designer? To get you got to give a little more.
Measure of Man is always a good thing to have.
re: Michael DiTullo
Its cool if you are not comfortable sharing, just fishing for a few good references. My details are not important. It was recommended to me to post on this site but isn’t requisite. FYI I am a University Professor and the discussion is to incoming Freshman.
If anyone else has anything I would greatly appreciate it.
Kindest-
Yo is just trying to help. Knowing the context is important. Ie. Your background, the students, etc. Info for a professional designer to design students would be different than a physics prof to a class of ba students.
R
Part of asking people to share is sharing yourself. Are you a uni professor in an ID program? With an ID background?
We can give you a list of books, but if you are giving a presentation on ergonomics and say, haven’t heard of the “Measure of Man” book that Julius suggested, then we are in a very different spot than if you are an expert in the subject.
Julius, “Measure of Man”, is a book I have access to and is a great starting point for the students. I have a few other books in mind but had not thought of this title as part of the presentation. It’s actually perfect in this case. Thank You.
My apologies if I have broken the rules of the club, and for my offense to anyone. I am not a fan of sharing too much, and even less when I think it’s unnecessary.
I think the problem is that you are being a little too vague. Erogonomics and design is about as specific as saying french fry and hamburger. If we knew a little more context it would be good.
That being said, maybe you could give a case study and really show them how they relate and function with each other. My ergo prof did a major case study that helped on the Haworth Zody chair. To be able to see the testing methods, and have him explain why/how they tested each area was a great way to see the overlap between the fields. He also showed how the ergo observations and results defined the chair characteristics. You can actually get the case study from Haworth:
summary: http://www.haworth.com/en-us/Knowledge/Workplace-Library/Documents/Zody’s-Research-Summary.pdf
full data: http://www.encompaskc.com/pages/WhitePaper/Objectively_Determining_Comfortable_Lumbar_Support.pdf
My ergo professor also worked on that project! Small world…
@rmezquiti: Measure of Man is a good starting point, but ergo is just one part of human factors, if you’re wanting to broaden the scope a bit you might try looking at “an introduction to human factors engineering” as it gets into controls design, research, and a lot of other parts of human factors work.
Currently I’m reading “Rethinking Sitting”, this might be another book to check out, it helps to have a bit of reference before reading it, but it’s definitely helped me be a little more aware when designing seating.
Lacking context, here are a few titles I would recommend:
Humanscale 1-9 (Diffrient)
Bodyspace (Pheasant)
US Army Natick Anthropometry study and 2003-2006 CDC Body Measurement Study are both useful, relatively up to date compilations of body dimensions.
Measure of Man
Sketching User Experiences
Beautiful Evidence (Tufte) - Good case study on poor info design and impact on shuttle explosion.
Universal Principles of Design
Ergonomics Abstracts
Journal of Man-Machine Interaction
NASA Stars database
Great list bcid.
Quick question, I was talking to some co workers at work and we were wondering how often these books are updated. We have several of the books you mentioned floating around the office, all recent publications as well, but how often is the content updated especially with people getting, well bigger?
Dreyfuss’ Measure of Man has always been my go to when I look something up, and my edition was published in 2002 and I believe updated in the early 90’s, but are all the specs up-to-date with the modern Man and Woman?
The US Natick Army Labs report seems quite interesting and recent, is that a public document?
Most of these are based on populations of relatively fit military personnel through the mid '90s, so they aren’t totally accurate, especially in light of 2/3 of Americans being overweight or obese. Siemens and Ford Motor Company created an updated data set based on UAW workers, which should be more reflective of the population as a whole, but I believe that is a proprietary data set for now.
The CDC set I believe is a normal population too. Both that and Nadick are online .pdfs. Search them and you’ll find them.
Re books, Gavriel Salvendy’s reference covers a lot of more ergonomics/hf topics.
You could always talk about the ADA guidelines for wayfinding in buildings, as you are an visiting architecture professor, are you not?
This isn’t a club, it’s a forum, and there are no rules, but as it was mentioned a mechanical engineer giving a presentation to ergonomics to a group of engineers is different from a visiting architecture professor at Pratt giving a lecture to a class of incoming freshmen with no context of what ergonomics or industrial design may even be. (See what I did there? 
)
If you are giving a discussion of ergonomics I would go out and pick any product that is ergonomic and give a breakdown of what design features lead to those results. The ubiquitous Aeron chair is a good example of illustrating how different shapes and sizes and adjustments lead to a better product.
It’s the internet. We don’t bite…at least not usually.
Ang maybe the opposite as well. Pick another “un-ergonimic” chair (to keep the example going) and compare and contrast.
I just checked the special interest sections over at IDSA and it looks like the Human Factors area is gone! (or not listed)?
anyone know?
Wow, these are terrific references. One questions I am looking at “Measure of Man and Woman” is this the same as “Measure of Man”
Bit of information here is, I am an Architectural Professor and have been for close to ten years now. I was asked to give a talk to 1st year Architectural Design Students on Ergonomics and Design.
I will try to structure it first discussing what “ergonomics” are and then follow up with examples and diagrams which show products and architectural projects in which ergonomics played a key part in the design. There are a few Luis Kahn building which in the most intimate of spaces reflect a keen understanding of the body in space.
Thank you to all who have been kind enough to share. My presentation is in about two weeks, I will keep checking here and will share my outline once it’s complete.
Kindest,
RM