Ergonomics and rules for the furniture design



Ergonomics and rules for the furniture design

CHAVES, Denise Lamounier Chaves1, Mendonça, Rosângela M. L. O.2

1. CEMA, School of Design, University of Minas Gerais State, Brazil

deniselamounier@ / PAPq/UEMG Scholarship

2. CEMA, School of Design, University of Minas Gerais State, Brazil

romiriam@.br

Abstract:

In a global context, where terms as design and ergonomics are popular and are frequently used and became trivial all around the world, the ergonomic factors and the great usability of the goods are explored more then ever as marketing and selling strategies. The safety and performance valuation of the products, as well as the user’s comfort, well-being and life quality are frequent subjects in the beginning of the 21th century.

The present article emphasis the need of application of ergonomic factors in the developing process of the products as a manner to make sure that the objects and systems will be adequate at the most to the user’s characteristics and needs, contributing, so far, to the improvement in the relation between products and users. Also, it intends to demonstrate how important the application of the ergonomic design as a differential of he product compared to its competitors.

In a special way, the role of the ergonomics and of the technical rules are approached related to the furniture design in the product developing steps – starting from its conception, and going to its evaluation of conformity to go to the market and its maintenance in this market until it becomes castoff, with the objective of making it acceptable and credible.

In this article, ergonomics and usability are discussed and the requirement level in which the rules are treated, as well as the gap that there is in relation to the desirable approach, in view of the respect to the user and also to the environment. It was reflected about the usability in the accessibility treatment aspect for aged and deficient people, in the legal aspects related to safety.

Key-words: Usability, Ergonomics, Design, Furniture

Topic: Design and usability

1. INTRODUCTION

The competition has grown with the market marked by the globalization, and because of it, design and ergonomics have been activities that are, today, known and applied in different segments.

These interdisciplinary sciences, for many times used and broadcasted in the products as a marketing and selling strategy, intend to, among others aspects, optimize the planning and the execution of projects, improving the relation between the users’ usage and satisfaction for each kind of products.

Due to the fact that has gotten bigger the amount of products offered with a similar level of high technology, the consuming marketing furniture field is showing itself as more exigent, establishing higher quality standards in products (PAZETTO, 2006) and claiming to manufacturers certificates that show conformity to the valid technical norms.

Besides, the market requirement for safe products, that at the same time please the function for what they were created, makes the ergonomics and the normative specifications become essential in the whole process of products design (PERUZZI, 1998 and BEZERRA, 2005).

This way, the observation and the application of technical norms and of ergonomic factors in products design, particularly in the furniture segment, are fundamental, nowadays, to the products survival in market and to make sure the attendance to the users’ needs concerning to their health, comfort, efficiency, trust, last and usability.

2. FURNITURE NORMS AND DESIGNS

The furnishings history was developed since human needs demanded production of objects that would be capable to supply some specific functions as sit, uphold and lie down.

Some abilities evolved, as the man’s technical capacity and esthetical sensibility, and with it new necessities and anxieties came up and demanded something that would outdo the primary functions carried out by the furniture, making wider their practical functions (in the queries of ability of being operational, ergonomics, usability and product normalization), esthetics functions (appearance esthetical-formal) and symbolic functions (semiotic dimensions, information levels, symbolic images) (GOMES FILHO, 2006). Thus, the furniture started acquiring characteristics related to usability, appearance and to the meanings given by users.

Since the first manmade models, the furniture passed through many and deep changes – appearance, material, technology of the production evolutions.

Today, the biggest part of furniture is made in series inside industries, so lots of materials are available to their fabrication. Furniture for offices, for example, can be manufactured in metallic materials (iron, steel, leagues), wood compound (plywood, agglomerate, MDF, OSB), and many types of engineer plastics (PAZETTO, 2006).

At the present moment, pieces of furniture are cataloged and classified by normative organs according to the function that they discharge in specifics environments (for example: residences, offices, schools, urban areas), establishing standard requirements for their fabrication. In Brazil, the normative organisms responsible for the elaboration of these norms are the Brazilian Association of Technical Norms (BATN – “Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas), that regulates volunteer norms, and government institutions, as the National Institute of Metrology and Industrial Quality – InMetro (“Instituto Nacional de Metrologia, Normalização e Qualidade Industrial”), and the Ministry of Job (“Ministério do Trabalho”), which elaborates the obligator norms.

In accordance to BATN ISSO/IEC Guide 2 (1998), the norms are documents that give characteristics or line of direction rules to the activities accomplishment or their results, aiming at an optimum level of organization in a determined context. So, the norms are quality standards approved by organisms known by the industry of goods and services that refer to the technological aspect as well as to the marketing aspect f the production.

For the furniture design, the technical norms applied establish mainly standards to products classification and terminology, to dimensional requirements (physics ergonomics) of safety and usability, and methods of products assays.

In such a manner, technical norms application is relevant in the development of new products, because they establish standards to be followed with the aim of optimize the quality of processes and products, contributing to standardization, quality growth and products acceptance increase in international and local markets (MORAES, 2002).

1. Ergonomic Design

Industrial Design is an interdisciplinary science connected in deep way to other sciences as engineer and marketing.

Fundamental element to aggregate value and to create visual identity in products, services and companies (PERUZZI, 1998), design represents, today, a strong tool of products differentiation in market.

By means of material application, processes, technologies and esthetical-formal characteristics, design also uses the ergonomic acknowledgement and other multifaceted abilities to put value in the products. According IIDA (2005), the ergonomics has contributed to make consuming products’ quality better, adapting them better to the users’ needs and characteristics.

Surpassing the simple advance in objects appearance, design represents yet optimization of global efficiency in goods manufacture. Beyond, it’s responsible for the reduction of raw materials and of the number of elements in the products (MORAES, 2002), and plays the relevant role in environment preservation, projecting objects with vision on environmental sustainability.

For the International Design Center (1979), the “great” design has, in its begin, the relation between man and object to obtain products’ configuration, especially in regards to aspects of work medicine and of perception. Still, design must not be occupied with a tangible product, but also it must give answers to environment, energy economy, reuse, durability and ergonomic questions (BÜRDEK, 2006).

As stated by MORAES (apud YAP, 2001), application of ergonomic factors to the design process, taking in account man capacities and limitations, improves and maximizes products functionality, safety and sensibility.

Thus, seen as an important competitive factor of market products, ergonomic design is a technology that purpose create functional, usable, and safe products in human terms, and its focus is the user, and its main aim is to make sure operability, safety and easy usage of the products – “easy to use, easy to learn” (MORAES, 1993).

In the furniture development, as says (MENEZES, 2005), ergonomics and technical norms must be put in all over the stages of a product development, collaborating since the phase of conceptual definition until the product evaluation in its pos-production stage.

Therefore, ergonomic design, when inserted in the whole products’ development process, helps the users to avoid harmful situations, as fatigue, stress, mistakes and accidents, as well as, it incorporates other value aspects to the product, as innovation, trustworthiness, rationalization, technological evolution, functionality, safety, comfort and usability.

In this way, ergonomics associated to product design has an objective of products’ adaptation to a diversity of users and the creation of efficient products in human terms. So, ergonomics attempt to make sure products facility usage, as its safety, productiveness and then users’ satisfaction.

In counterpart, in furniture project, a non-observation of necessary ergonomic aspects – as inadequate usage of anthropometrics relations amongst other factors – can cause less efficiency and discomfort to users, harming users’ performance and efficiency when using the product.

Some recurrent themes calls attention to the need of ergonomic factors application to the products and systems related, as the increase of working journey with video terminals (computer science) and illnesses, mainly, caused by lack of care in relation to ergonomic and postural aspects – Injury caused by repetitive efforts (IRE – “LER, Lesão por Esforços Repetitivos”) and muscles-skeletal illnesses. PERUZZI (1998) attributes illnesses as IRE, scoliosis and tenosinovite some of the main reasons for precocious retirement in Brazil.

The population aging and the need of improving products and environment accessibility to carrier of special necessities users are important aspects to be observed too. In such cases, ergonomics can collaborate in universal products projects with the “analysis of activities of a task, postures assumed, arms, hands and legs movements, proposing new working stations, new tools and ways to organize the work” (MORAES, 2008), as well as in the adaptation of architectural spaces, habitations, means of transportation, public and domestic equipments, including working stations and computers.

According to GOMES FILHO (2006), people considered carrier of special necessities are those who have any ability deficiency with lost or abnormal ability to carry through physiological or mental activities, and the universal design has the final aim of developing theories, principles and solutions that will lead to the possibility of usage for all, as far as it’s possible for them, the same physical solutions.

3. CONCLUSION

In a place as this, with globalized economy, it’s increasing the need of establishing a competitive differential in products and services. Due to the huge offer and to the consuming products variety in the market, one of the most effective ways in manufactured products commercialization is the increase in their quality.

The incorporation of quality attributes – ergonomic and esthetical techniques – in development of new products collaborate to a larger compatibility between products and users, increasing efficiency of the relation of usability and, consequently, reducing the probability of accidents, detriments and mistakes.

As marked by IIDA (2005), the globalized competition itself presses fabricators of durable goods, such as home appliances and furniture, to invest in the quality improvement and also in prices decrease to conquer new markets.

Considering industrial production, today, it’s impossible to conceive production idea without ergonomics and norms application, in view of the need of establishing standards in production as a way to maintain everything fine and organized, and optimize gained results, guaranteeing products’ quality and function ability.

However, current market competitiveness demands a higher development of differentials. Ergonomics comes as a value to be explored, for example, to guarantee access to the small groups with special profiles, maybe because of their age, because of physical or sensorial characteristics. Norms, in this case, would also add efforts to guarantee accessibility rights to these minorities in population.

Then, furniture design associated to technical norms and to ergonomics collaborates to the relations of these products usability through manufacture optimization and products usage facility. Related to the environment, application of ergonomic and technical factors helps to reduce the waste and to increase the products’ life cycle.

4. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Associação Brasileira de Ergonomia (2007). In: O que é ergonomia? Retrieved July 2007, from .

Associação Brasileira das Indústrias do Mobiliário (2007). Retrieved July 2007, from ó.br.

Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (2007). Retrieved April 2007, from .

Associação brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT). Guia 2 – normalização e atividades relacionadas: vocabulário geral – ABNT ISO / IEC. Rio de Janeiro: 1998.

Dul. J.; Weerdmeester, B. Ergonomia prática. São Paulo: Editora Edgard Blücher Ltda, 1ª edição, 1995.

Gomes Filho, João. Design do Objeto: bases conceituais. Escrituras Editora. São Paulo, 2006.

Iida, Itiro. Ergonomia, Projeto e Produção. Ed. Edgard Blücher Ltda, 2ª Edição. São Paulo, 2005.

Löbach, Bernd. Desenho industrial: bases para a configuração dos produtos industriais. Editora Edgard Blücher Ltda. 1ª edição. São Paulo, 2001.

Menezes, João Bezerra de. Ergonomia do mobiliário: parâmetros ergonômicos para o projeto móvel. II Design Fórum. São Paulo, 2005 (material não editado).

Moraes, Anamaria de; FRISONI, Bianka Cappucci. Ergodesign: produtos e processos. Artigo Ergodesign: uma associação – duas tecnologias complementares projetando para o ser humano. Editora 2AB, 2001.

Moraes, Márcia Aranha Ferraz Dias de; Nassar, André Meloni (2002). Estudo da competitividade de cadeias integradas no Brasil: impactos das zonas de livre comércio – cadeia, madeira e móveis. Campinas. Retrieved August 2007, from omercio/32madeiraMoveisCompleto.pdf.

Instituto Nacional de Metrologia, Normalização e Qualidade Industrial (2007). Retrieved May, from .

Internacional Standardization Organization (2007). Retrieved April, from .

Pazetto, Valéria. Normas, ensaios e testes de controle da qualidade em móveis. Brasília, 2006. Dossiê Técnico – Universidade de Brasília. Centro de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Tecnológico.

Peruzzi, Jaime Torezan. Manual sobre a importância do design no desenvolvimento de produtos. Bento Gonçalves, SENAI/CETEMO/SEBRAE, 1998.

Moraes, Anamaria de. (2008). In: Ergonomia: temas atuais. Retrieved March, from .

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download