Hi, I'm Phnam.
Hi, I'm Mardis.
And we're the hosts of Future Future, where two designers talk about the future of everything.
We're in the business of turning science fiction into reality for a better future.
And today, we're going to talk about ergonomic design.
So ergonomic design is about design that works for you rather than you working for it.
Now, in our modern life we work on computers for long periods of time.
We click on the keyboard a lot.
And this causes all kinds of problems with carpal tunnel syndrome, fatigue, repetitive injury syndrome.
And even if you're not in the office. Maybe you're in manufacturing.
Maybe you're in a construction trade.
Anything you're doing over and over again really stresses out the body.
So ergonomic design can be used to help counteract all these sort of fatigue and issues
that we [encounter] every day.
So let's look down memory lane.
How did we deal with ergonomic design in the past?
So, back in the day we used to make things by hand.
With wood. With metal. With whatever we had around.
And the craftsperson would run their hand over the product and make sure that it would be comfortable to the body, to the hand.
That's why there were a little bit more curly things back in the day.
Because there's no straight lines on the body, right?
But over time, we refined design and explored different shapes and design languages.
And about twenty years ago, if you saw a lot of the famous couches from famous designers, there were a lot of straight lines.
There were a lot of hard foams.
And they were beautiful to look at! Very iconic.
But extremely uncomfortable to sit on.
So along came what we call the La-Z-Boy chair.
And I think we're all pretty familiar with it.
There's been millions of them sold.
And they're a big, pillowy, soft, sink-into chair that you can sit in while you watch TV.
And in fact - TV is probably why this came up.
But this is really overly ergonomic.
And it's fantastic, but it's kind of frumpy looking.
It's not really attractive.
So, next came the Aeron chair.
And if you're not familiar with the Aeron chair, it's sort of the pinnacle of office chair design.
It was designed in '94, I think, by Chadwick and Stumpf.
And they created something that countered everything we're familiar with.
No longer are we using heavy leathers and foams.
They used really light materials that are comfortable.
They used meshes that you sit on and allow air to circulate.
So when you're sitting at a computer for, say, eight hours a day, it's really comfortable.
Your lumbar is supported.
Your back is supported.
And you can do these tasks without fatigue.
And the reason why it took so long for design to catch up to the body
was because we needed development in material science and really fine tuning all these details that make the product fit your body.
And everybody's body is different, right?
So adjustments are important in making sure that the average size of things actually fits the average man and the average woman.
And talking about bias...
the vast majority of designers are men, so they design things for male proportions.
And that makes complete sense because they can test it on themselves immediately after they design it.
But we need more women to design
and we need more women to test the products on so they actually fit a much wider range of average bodies.
So to that point - be careful when you're modeling in three-dimensional software
because you don't have that physical quality to really test against.
You have to do 3D printing and rapid prototyping to really figure things out.
And be really iterative in your process to make sure you don't implicitly put bias into your designs.
So let's talk about how designers make the right decisions when it comes to ergonomic design.
So when we design today as industrial designers,
we use a lot of 3D modeling tools to create the shapes that are eventually manufactured and turned into products.
So in that virtual world, we may take references from 3D heads.
You know - female heads, male heads, child's head or hands or anything else.
But that 3D head is not going to answer the right questions for you, right?
They're not going to tell you, "oh, this is not comfortable at this point." Or, "this is hitting this part of my head in a wrong way."
That's why you have to turn these 3D models into prototypes.
You can 3D print or you can use any other tools.
And then once you have these prototypes you have to make sure that they're the right weight,
the center of gravity is in the right place, and then you have to test them on actual humans.
And then ask the questions, "is it comfortable? Can you walk with it?
Can you run with it? Is it stable? Do you see yourself using this thing all day long?"
And then after you have your answers, you come back to the drawing board
and then you continue the cycle again and again until you end up with a design
that satisfies the vast majority of people you've tested it on.
So when we talk about material science and ergonomics...
advancements are coming out all the time.
Certainly, we can develop foams and different materials that contour to the body.
But when you're mass producing products, you're still doing it for a large number of people.
It's not completely personalized.
But what happens is we can now plan ahead and say,
"okay, we're going to design a ski boot or snowboard boot that comes out with a really nicely contoured inner shell,
but then at the retail spot they actually heat up the shell."
You put your foot in there, and as it cools down it contours specifically to your body.
Specifically to your ankle or your foot.
So it's more safe. It's more secure. It's more comfortable.
And you are ultimately happier on the slopes!
So a lot of times when we think about ergonomic design we think of shapes or materials.
But what's very exciting about the time we live in is that we can actually overlap multi-sensory experiences.
Right? It's not only about the touch. It's also about the smell.
It's also about the sound it makes.
It's also about the interaction it has with us,
whether it's haptics, vibroacoustics, sound, or anything else.
So the ergonomics is the comfort in which you place yourself when you use a product or when you're around it.
So other technological advancements that allow ultimate personalization in ergonomics are things like 3D body scans.
You know, you can scan your body and you can try on clothes at the retail outlet or online.
But it goes well beyond that into scanning the inner ear
so that you can have earbuds that are designed specifically for your ear.
But don't just do it in one ear. You've got to do it with both!
Because both ears are different and we really want to customize that.
Things like generative design.
It's the optimum design of a product and material for a very specific use case.
This is a type of ergonomic design, or it could be an application of!
The takeaway of this episode is that today's designers work a lot in the digital world.
They're creating these beautiful shapes.
But they may or may not work on the human body.
And the only way to get there is to create the jump between digital and physical world.
And only after we test these products on actual humans
and ask them the right questions about, "does it fits them? Does it make them feel secure?" et cetera,
are we going to refine that ergonomic design.
But what we want as designers is to make the first contact with each product
- whether it's physical contact, visual contact -
something on the level of euphoria.
We want people to experience pleasure when they're in the presence of our designs.
So if you've enjoyed this conversation about ergonomics today,
leave us a comment below, and tell us how you might advance the ergonomic cause.
And until next time, bye bye!
Bye bye!