Ergonomic design is crucial in ensuring that organizational spaces, devices, and systems deliver good usability, as well as increase user efficiency and comfort. Ergonomic applications cover a wide range. They include chairs and tables designed to increase productivity and prevent injury or pain, in addition to designs for electronic devices such as mice and keyboards.
With the rise of new AR and VR technologies, another aspect of ergonomic design relates to augmented reality and virtual reality. AR devices such as VR headsets should be designed to take into account user comfort. One of the common complaints of using AR and VR devices is issues such as headaches or dizziness.
In this article, we discuss the basic principles of ergonomics design and its importance in the workplace, lab, and daily life.
What Is Ergonomics?
Ergonomics is the scientific discipline of creating and optimizing design to maximize human well-being and system performance. The principles of ergonomic design can be applied to reduce human injury and discomfort, increase safety in the workplace, and improve productivity.
In all, there are three types of ergonomics: physical, cognitive, and organizational. Ergonomic principles are best applied in a systematic manner. This means that it is not enough to simply get ergonomic chairs or desks.
Instead, the whole space and organizational system should be designed and arranged so that the ergonomic experience is complete and holistic. This would ensure employee comfort and overall increases in worker safety and organizational productivity.
The Different Types of Ergonomics
As mentioned earlier, ergonomics can be divided into three major types: physical, cognitive, and organizational. Physical ergonomics relates to design and practices aimed at minimizing injury and discomfort to the human body. Cognitive ergonomics relates to design related to how data and information are arranged and accessed by humans.
Lastly, organizational ergonomics involves taking lessons learned from both physical and cognitive ergonomics to improve how the organization performs in a systemic manner in order to increase overall organizational productivity while ensuring safety.
We will look at each of these in turn.
Physical Ergonomics
Physical ergonomics is the most obvious type of ergonomics. This type of ergonomics has to do with physical stress on the human body while at work. In our sedentary work culture,w which revolves around using computers and keyboards, this often means proper posture while sitting or standing at your desk at work.
Good physical ergonomics ensures safety in the office, factory floor, or lab. Ignoring physical ergonomics can lead to repetitive strain injuries or the development of long-term musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in workers.
Research has shown that 30% of all injuries and illnesses suffered by workers in the manufacturing industry were MSD-related. These are injuries and conditions that result from the constant repetition of a singular task (e.g., typing for long hours on a keyboard), bad posture on poorly designed chairs, reaching overhead, and so on are activities that can result in these types of injuries.
In earlier posts, we discussed how ergonomic mice can help reduce the risk of repetitive strain injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, and how adjustable standing desks can improve productivity and reduce the risk of back pain.
A number of factors should be taken into account when implementing physical ergonomic principles. These include:
1. The physical characteristics of the worker. For example, workers may need adjustable chairs and tables to make sure that they are not straining their bodies while working on the factory floor or office.
2. Safety issues. This is especially true for the factory floor or the lab. A factory floor could include equipment that can cause grievous or life-threatening injuries to workers. Labs may also include equipment and chemicals that do the same. Ergonomic principles in these conditions will aim to reduce safety risks.
3. Comfort. Workers can only be productive when comfortable. The equipment they used should be designed to ensure such comfort, especially when they have to perform repetitive tasks for lengthy periods.
Cognitive Ergonomics
Cognitive ergonomics seeks to arrange information and data in a manner, where the cognitive difficulty to work with them is reduced to a minimum. It is a field ripe for new development currently occurring in AR and VR. The factors that go into cognitive ergonomics include:
Perception
Reasoning
Memory
Motor responses
The more cognitively difficult it is to perform a task, the more stressful the worker will be. A traditional example of this would be solving cognitively difficult tasks with multiple monitors.
Working with a single screen or monitor would mean relying on printed-out files to reference key information. Shifting your focus from instructions on a stack of papers lying on the desk to a monitor would massively increase your cognitive load.
Adopting multiple monitors or screens could easily solve these problems, which we have already talked about in this post. Multiple monitors in terms of cognitive ergonomics can help:
Reference critical information while engaged in other tasks
Use multiple programs simultaneously
Visualize information optimally, as in a vertical monitor
AR and VR In Cognitive Ergonomics
AR and VR present novel and exciting opportunities regarding the future of work. For example, AR means that work instructions can be projected into a worker's field of vision via an AR headset, while the worker is carrying out these tasks.
This means there is no need for the worker to memorize complex instructions. This leads to greater precision and makes the entire process less prone to errors. Moreover, as discussed in a previous post on AR and VR in the workplace, even in training AR and VR can increase memory retention rates and reduce error.
Also, the highly visual nature of AR means that workers with disabilities can more easily participate in the modern workplace and engage with their work in more interesting and satisfying ways.
For work processes that involve multiple complicated steps, good cognitive economics implemented via VR would mean that workers focus less on memorizing instructions and more on safety, quality, and finishing tasks on time.
Organizational Ergonomics
Organizational ergonomics takes into account the systems, processes, and structures that companies or institutions have in place to interact with their employees or to allow employees to interact with each other.
It aims to achieve a harmonized system of proper communication, employee career improvement, increased output, and improved efficiency. Aspects of organizational ergonomics include:
Teamwork
Career development plans
Communication
Quality management
Work design and flow
Telework
One of the keys to ensuring that organizational ergonomics is effective is by drawing up effective career development plans that consider the need of your employees in terms of training them on how processes, communication, and systems within the organization can be improved.
These plans should not begin from the top down, but they should start with the workers to ensure that improvements are made from their perspectives or with their betterment in mind.
Ergonomics Is Essential In the Future of Work
Ergonomics is not simply about using a vertical mouse to avoid wrist injuries or carpal tunnel syndrome. The future of work is worker-centric, which means that you should aim to create an organization that considers a holistic and complete approach to ergonomic principles and design. In such a system, the employee is at the center.
A system of ergonomics done well involves putting systems in place to ensure that worker safety, comfort, and well-being are maximized to ensure that they are more productive or increase output quantity, quality, or both optimally.
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