Lesson video

Hello.

My name is Mr. Donnelley.

I'm one of the design technology teachers here for Oak Academy.

This lesson focuses on the two terms and their importance, the first term is ergonomics and the second term is anthropometrics.

We'll apply the understanding of both of these really important words to the context that we're studying for this unit.

Hope you enjoy it.

So in this lesson, there are three things that we're going to cover.

The first thing is we're going to learn about ergonomics and anthropometrics.

The second thing that we're going to do is we're going to see what we can learn from existing products.

And then the last part of the lesson we're going to collect some data that we can use to design a custom product.

So it's three things, ergonomics, anthropometrics, looking at some existing products and then collecting some data to design our own custom designed products.

As always with my lessons.

There's two simple things that you'll need, one of them will be some plain paper and the second is a pen or a pencil.

If you've not got those things, pause the video, go and get them, come back, get comfy and we'll crack on.

So to fully understand this lesson, there are three terms that's going to help that you understand now.

The first one is anthropometrics, and you might've heard part of this word before.

Especially the last part of the word metric.

The word anthropometrics simply means measurements of the human body that are used by designers.

So if a designer is designing something for a person to use.

Quite often, they'll need to measure the person to make sure that the product is the right size.

The next term, ergonomics.

We combine many products that are ergonomically designed and that means that they've been optimised to be easy to use for human interaction.

And then the last term, a custom product.

This is normally something which is built as a one-off for a single client, so that is custom built for them.

So it's a one-off single product, not off the shelf, that's something custom made for one particular person.

So you can see with the unit that we're studying, ergonomics, anthropometrics, and custom made products.

It's really important.

To understand where the word comes from, that can often help you remember the actual word itself.

So what does anthropometrics actually mean? And how can we break it down? The first part of the word is anthropo- and that comes from a Greek word anthropos.

And that means human.

You can probably see what's going to come next but the word metric.

Most of you will have heard the term metric in design technology lessons and normally is to do with measuring things and in our case in millimetres.

So if we've got the Greek word anthropos to mean human and then we've got measurements, you put those two together, we've got anthropometrics, it's to do with the measurements of the human body.

So now that you know that anthropometric means human bodies and measurements, it's important that you know how a designer might use the measurements.

So assume you need to design something that relies on you knowing the size of the product so it fits in with the size of people you'd use anthropometric data.

So if for instance, you were to design a computer mouse and you want the size of it to be correct for a hand.

Then what you do is you might think what is the age group of the person using the product? You'd collect as much data as you can to measure a hand size.

And then rather than just average it all out, you would disregard the bottom 5% and top 5% of measurements and focus on the 90% that's left.

Just underneath the little video of me, you can see that there is a graph.

It's called a bell curve, and if you are to get a hundred people and take their measurement, we'll assume it's their height, and you plotted it on a graph, that's normally how the distribution would look.

If you were going to design a door, you might think well the bottom 5% and the top 5%, we'll disregard that data and we'll measure the remaining 90 people, average it out and that would be the height you could set as a door that's specific for that group of people that you've measured.

The people at the bottom 5%, the lowest percentile, they'd be able to walk through easily and the very tall people, just a few that are there, they might find it a little bit difficult but you know that you would design something that suits 90% of the population.

But in this case, with it being a door, the people at the bottom one to five percentile, they'd be able to fit through.

So the fifth to 95th percentile, that is 90% of the population.

That's the data that's averaged and the bottom 5 and top 5% they're disregarded.

In a minute I'd like you to pause this and read what's on this slide.

This is going to form the first task of the lesson.

What you're going to do is take some measurements of your hand.

So get a sharp pencil, put your hand on a piece of paper and draw around the hand, but keeping the pencil as close to your hand as you can.

If you don't do it close to your hand then when you come to measure what you've drawn you'll find that really you may be five millimetres out.

So keep the pen really close to the hand and draw around it.

Once you've drawn around your hand, you need to take measurements, as many as you can, from each finger, the width of your hand, the length of your hand.

As much as you can and add those to the page.

After this slide, once you paused it, read, you'll be able to see an example that I've done.

So here's my example.

I've considered this to be unfinished.

I drew around my hand and I added just a few dimensions.

What I'd like you to do, if yours look similar to mine, is try to extend the task, by adding as many dimensions as you can so that the picture is full of dimensioned digits and lengths and widths of your hand.

So add to it.

The more data you have the more usable the data will be.

If you could pause the video now and read what the second task is for this lesson> You should now have one sheet of paper with your hand drawn around and dimensions added.

There's a downloadable worksheet for this lesson.

And if you download the worksheet, print it out, or you've not got a printer, just make your own worksheets on a sheet of paper.

And then you're going to collect data to complete the table.

And as an extension task, you could even have a go at plotting a graph from the numbers that you've collected.

So pause the video and have a read.

So this is the blank table.

As you can see, you need five people.

If you don't have five, you could use whatever you've got to hand, excuse the pun.

Once you've got the people that are willing to take part, you need to measure the length of the hand and the width of their hand.

Write the numbers in the box and then work out what the mean average is for the lengths and widths of hands.

As I said on the previous slide an extension task will be to try to plot a graph for this.

The more people that you can collect the data of, the easier it will be to form your own distribution curve that could be usable and might even look like a bell curve.

Now that we've considered anthropometrics, and that's purely related to data and sizes of the human body.

The next term I mentioned was ergonomics.

Ergonomics is not to do with comfort only.

Some people have misunderstood when they say that ergonomically designed things are solely related to comfort.

For me, if I were to sum it up simply, it's all to do with optimised ease of use.

So if you own a product that doesn't work well, isn't easy to use, might be uncomfortable, could be too heavy, they might have a wire that's too short, it might be too hot or too cold.

Then it might not be ergonomically designed.

On here, I've got a collection of pictures for you to have a look at, and some of them, I know that you'll understand what I mean about ergonomics and it not just being related to comfort.

So the first one, we've got a controller for some games console.

You know that it's comfortable to hold and anthropometric data will have been used to make sure that it can be ergonomically designed.

So anthropometrics and ergonomics are closely linked but the definition is different.

There's a cordless drill.

And it may be that the position of the battery helps the drill being balanced with the position of the motor around the handle.

So where you hold it by hand, there's the balanced weight to either side, which will help it be easier to use for an extended period of time.

Therefore it would be ergonomically designed.

I'm not going to go through every picture but one that I've heard many teachers talk about in the past is a hairdryer.

If you imagine having a hairdryer that's either too heavy, or blows air which is too hot, or the wire isn't long enough, or the buttons aren't in the correct position.

That would not be ergonomically designed.

So it's definitely not just to do with comfort, it's the way that the whole product has been designed and optimised to make it easy to use.

So have a look at the pictures yourself and try to work out why I've put each picture on this slide.

Now that you know what ergonomics means, what I'd like you to do is to go and find something in your house that you think has been ergonomically designed.

And we're going to study how it's been shaped.

So the product that I've used has been a computer mouse.

And the example that I've got on my next slide are a few drawings that I've done of a computer mouse.

Just because the one I've got I find really well ergonomically designed.

It fits my hand, it's got no wires and it seems comfortable to use.

So I'd like you to study how it's been shaped.

And once you've looked at the features, I'd like you to draw the product.

So you can pause the video, have a good read through this slide and then complete the task.

So these are my examples.

I decided to focus on my computer mouse because I think it's ergonomically designed.

I looked at the key features that make it ergonomically designed.

It was the length, the width and the curve across the top.

And I've decided to apply those ergonomic features to four other mice.

I think it probably took a couple of minutes for each one.

And I'd like to hope that during our time together that I help you develop faster sketching techniques.

So quick drawings, nothing that takes too long, and it's just a study of ergonomics through a product.

So to start to sum up this lesson.

If you can remember what we did at the end of lesson one, you know that I'm starting to develop a product which will help a para triathlete carry a cup of coffee whilst on the move.

I didn't consider anthropometric data or ergonomic considerations during lesson one.

But now you've worked through this lesson with me, hopefully you'll realise how important it is that if we're going to design a one-off custom product for one person, especially a para triathlete to carry a cup of coffee on the move, that we need to consider ergonomics and anthropometrics.

What I'd like you to do is pause this slide, read it really carefully, and then go back to the work you did in lesson one, and see if you can add something to your specification about ergonomics and anthropometrics.

So now that we've finished the lesson, I thought I'd just revisit the three keywords and terms. So the first one was anthropometrics.

I've used that word so much in this lesson.

I hope it's sunk in now, that anthropos was the Greek term and that meant human.

And then we've got metric to do with measurements and in our cases in millimetres.

So anthropometrics was to do with the measurements of human body that designers use.

The next word was ergonomics, and this is related to the design of a product and its functions and features that make sure that it is optimised for human use.

And then the last term is custom products.

They're designed to be one of a kind rather than the sort of thing that you'd get from a shop where there's many products that are all the same, that are designed for the average person.

So anthropometrics and ergonomics are very closely linked, but are different.

And then custom products.

They need to have anthropometrics and ergometrics taken into consideration to make them suitable for the client.

I hope really enjoyed the lesson, I have.

And I'll see you in the next one.

Thank you.