Ergonomics 4 Product Design, Aesthetics, Ergonomics, and Research

Aesthetics and Product Appeal

Consistency with an aesthetic concept can significantly enhance a product's appeal, as seen in the appreciation of 'retro' designs. However, these trends are often cultural and short-lived, making their popularity uncertain. Aesthetics in design should consider four 'pleasure types':

  • Physio-pleasure: Pleasure derived from sensory experiences like touch and smell. For example, the smoothness of a curve in a hand-held product or the scent of a new car.

  • Socio-pleasure: Pleasure gained from social interaction, where a product acts as a 'talking point' or the focus of a social gathering. It may also give the user a sense of social identity tied to a specific group through a particular style of clothing.

  • Psycho-pleasure: Satisfaction from successfully completing a task, enhanced by the product's usability, such as a quick and simple ATM interface. Closely related to product usability.

  • Ideo-pleasure: Pleasure derived from abstract values embodied by a product, such as eco-friendly materials and processes that convey environmental responsibility.

Each of these pleasures should be considered when designing a product to assess their importance and how they manifest in the product.

Aesthetics and Ergonomics in Design

People increasingly seek intellectual and spiritual nourishment from products, not just basic functionality. Designer Alberto Alessi notes that consumers buy products for reasons beyond their primary function. Appreciation of pleasure in product use is paramount for both consumers and the design industry.

Consumers expect functionality and usability but are also seeking products that elicit feelings like pleasure or emotional resonance. This often comes from aesthetics: the look, feel, and tactile response of the product, or more abstract feelings like reflected status. Traditionally, product design comprises three elements:

  • Aesthetics

  • Ergonomics

  • Design

Product designers need knowledge of all these elements. For small products, a single designer might handle all aspects. For larger products like cars, designers may focus solely on aesthetics, with ergonomists and engineers providing expertise for the other elements.

The Convergence of Ergonomics and Aesthetics

Traditionally, ergonomics covered usability and functionality, while aesthetics was the designer's domain. However, the boundaries are blurring, with ergonomists now using scientific methods to understand and enhance aesthetics in product design.

The best design balances all three components from the start, often requiring compromises. Understanding all issues involved aids in making acceptable compromises. For example, the design priorities for a sports car differ significantly from those of a family saloon car.

Design Priorities: Sports Car vs. Family Saloon Car

Sports Car:

  • Emphasis on aesthetics and performance.

  • Prioritizes speed, appearance, and sound.

  • Ergonomics may be compromised, with difficult entry/exit, limited storage, seating, and visibility.

  • Physical and functional ergonomics are secondary to aesthetics and performance.

Family Saloon Car:

  • Emphasis on functionality and usability.

  • Prioritizes family needs with adequate seating and storage.

  • Aesthetics are important but secondary to practical needs.

The Role of Legislation and Ergonomics

Products must meet safety standards before entering the market. In safety-critical situations, ergonomics principles must override aesthetics. Examples include equipment used by surgeons, in theatres, or by air traffic controllers. Legislation ensures products meet these constraints.

Conversely, there are situations where aesthetics may predominate, such as cars that are thrilling to drive despite conflicting with ergonomic principles. Considerations include speed limits and traffic calming measures.

Conflicts Between Ergonomics and Aesthetics

Some products conflict directly with ergonomics. For example, fashionable shoes may be beautiful but detrimental to foot health and posture, increasing the risk of slipping. Conversely, ergonomic footwear might lack aesthetic appeal.

Other examples include the Alessi corkscrew, designed to be more than just a functional object but may have usability compromises; mobile phones, initially large and heavy, becoming miniaturized for portability, compromising control and display usability.

Where ergonomics and aesthetics meet easily are ideas such as chairs which look good and are comfortable to sit in, buttons on your mobile, combined with good ergonomics, for example, aesthetic phone give that feedback.

Balancing Aesthetics and Ergonomics

Compromises are necessary in design to balance aesthetics and ergonomics. The responsibility falls on the designer to appropriately balance them, particularly for non-safety-critical products.

Consider the evolution of mobile phones: early models were large due to technological limitations, but advancements allowed for smaller, more usable designs. Miniaturization of products is an example of a compromised product area where sizes were compromised and many have become too small for easy use.

Eco-Design and Sustainability

There is an urgent need to redesign all products to minimize environmental and social impact. Sustainability involves redesigning products from raw material extraction to end-of-life.

A few manufacturers are starting to take sustainability seriously, aiming for a 'total beauty' that encompasses a product's entire life history. This contrasts with the superficial elegance of many designer products that have hidden environmental costs.

  • For every eco-designed product, there are thousands of products that are environmentally destructive.

  • Consumers are not always demanding sustainable products, especially if they come at a higher price or lower performance.

  • It is up to designers and product managers to redefine how products are made to prevent pollution and overuse of resources.

Environmental and Social Issues

Many products, even award-winning ones, are made using polluting methods or by exploiting workers. Discerning consumers are beginning to look beyond mere function and aesthetics.

While some manufacturers are making efforts to use recycled materials or reduce toxic components, many products still contain materials that are harmful to the environment.

The challenge lies in making it easy for people to choose environmentally friendly products and practices.

Sustainable Product Design

True sustainability means products with a 'total beauty' – minimizing environmental and social impact throughout their lifecycle.

  • An individual product may seem harmless enough. But the environmental damage it causes happens elsewhere, out of sight and mind, hidden from the consumer and often from the designer as well.

  • Pollution, deforestation, species loss, and global warming are all by products of manufacture. This is the Hidden Ugliness" of products.

  • It's no longer enough that a product is pretty on the outside, cheap and available. We owe it to the coming generations who will have to clean up our products in the future to manufacture in harmony with nathure

  • We have to reveal all these hidden environmental and social impacts and create products that have a "total beauty". These products, also known as 'sustainable products', are those that are the best for people, profits and the planet.

Recycling and Renewable Energy

Recycling can mimic natural processes. Using materials that have been grown, like plastics made from corn, is also beneficial, alongside traditional materials like wood, paper, and leather.

All materials flow can be powered by photosynthesis, Reo iIG(Fe aák sa muscle or renewable energy. This covers products with mounted photovoltaic solar cells, or those hooked up to a mains supply powered by wind, wave, biomass, or waste pulverisation, through to products that are grown or operated by hand. This also applies to 'embodied energy the energy used to manufacture and distribute a product.

Products should consume only renewable energy in both manufacture and use.

Eliminating Harmful Releases

To be compatible with nature, we need to eliminate releases of materials that disrupt life. This obviously includes liqid effluent from pipes, smoke from chimneys, and spills onto the ground. However, as all products are ultimately disposable, it also includes products themselves.

If there is no plan or system for product take back' and full reuse and recycing, then every product sold represents a toxic release.

All releases to air, water, land or space are food for other systems.

Efficiency and Social Responsibility

Efficient use of materials and energy is commercially and logically sound, reducing pollution and resource depletion.

Exploitation and mistreatment of our fellow man is unsuppoItable, vc companies do it at the time because such abuse is hidden to the end user. Do we deliberately icoigi. Ulve tlt !buu nd unsafe working conditions? Of c urse not. But unless we uSe our ntiuci.cc to actvely des1gn tÉ.coc pauwieH!S JUi, they wll stlt be thcre. Product anufacture and use supports basic human rights and natural justice.

The product in manufacture and use requires 90% less materials, eneroy and water now than products providing equivalent utility did in 1990

The Eleven Principles of Total Beauty

Based on a review of 500 products, researchers identified eleven principles used in 99% of environmental innovations:

  1. Cyclic Mineral (CYM)

  2. Cyclic Grown (CYG)

  3. Alternative Energy in Use (AEU)

  4. Alternative Energy in Manufacture and Distribution (AEM)

  5. Substitute Materials (SUB)

  6. Stewardship Sourcing (STW)

  7. Utility (UTY)

  8. Durability (DUR)

  9. Efficiency (EFF)

  10. "Bio-everything" (BIO)

  11. Communication (COM)

Cyclic Mineral (CYM)
The product becomes more cyclic by making use of recycled meta, glass or plastic, by becoming morc recyclable, or both.

Cyclic Grown (CYG)
The product becomes more cyclic by making use of natural materials Such as wood, leather and wool, or by becoming more composable, or both.

Alternative Energy in Use (AEU)
The product becomes more solar by putting a renewable cnergy in use, sometimes by using solar-generated electricity.

Alternative Energy in Manufacture and Distribution (AEM)
The product becomes more solar by using a renewable energy source for its manufacturing process.

Substitute Materials (SUB)
The product becomes safer as a result of toxic materials or components beng substituted for safer ones.

Stewardship Sourcing (STW)
The product helps preserve habitats, or also is more social, by getting raw materials from fairly traded sources or low impact sources such as approved forests.

Utility (UTY)
The product becomes more efficient by providing greater utility for the user, such as multifunction products or rented products.

Durability (DUR)
The product becomes more cfticient in materials usage as it lasts longer.

Efficicncy (EFF)
The product becomes more efficient in its use of energy, water and materials, both in manutacture and use.

Principles of Total Beauty Continued

*Bio-everything