Framework for Dynamic Evaluation of Muscle Fatigue in Manual Handling Work

Muscle fatigue is defined as the point at which the muscle is no longer able to sustain the required force or work output level. The overexertion of muscle force and muscle fatigue can induce acute pain and chronic pain in human body. When muscle fatigue is accumulated, the functional disability can be resulted as musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). There are several posture exposure analysis methods useful for rating the MSD risks, but they are mainly based on static postures. Even in some fatigue evaluation methods, muscle fatigue evaluation is only available for static postures, but not suitable for dynamic working process. Meanwhile, some existing muscle fatigue models based on physiological models cannot be easily used in industrial ergonomic evaluations. The external dynamic load is definitely the most important factor resulting muscle fatigue, thus we propose a new fatigue model under a framework for evaluating fatigue in dynamic working processes. Under this framework, virtual reality system is taken to generate virtual working environment, which can be interacted with the work with haptic interfaces and optical motion capture system. The motion information and load information are collected and further processed to evaluate the overall work load of the worker based on dynamic muscle fatigue models and other work evaluation criterions and to give new information to characterize the penibility of the task in design process.Comment: International Conference On Industrial Technology, Chengdu : Chine (2008

Combining economic and social goals in the design of production systems by using ergonomics standards

In designing of production systems, economic and social goals can be combined, if ergonomics is integrated into the design process. More than 50 years of ergonomics research and practice have resulted in a large number of ergonomics standards for designing physical and organizational work environments. This paper gives an overview of the 174 international ISO and European CEN standards in this field, and discusses their applicability in design processes. The available standards include general recommendations for integrating ergonomics into the design process, as well as specific requirements for manual handling, mental load, task design, human-computer-interaction, noise, heat, body measurements, and other topics. The standards can be used in different phases of the design process: allocation of system functions between humans and machines, design of the work organization, work tasks and jobs, design of work environment, design of work equipment, hardware and software, and design of workspace and workstation. The paper is meant to inform engineers and managers involved in the design of production systems about the existence of a large number of ISO and CEN standards on ergonomics, which can be used to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.review;standard;standardization;ergonomics;CEN;ISO;human factors;production engineering;production planning

Enhanced model for ergonomic evaluation of information systems: application to scientific research information system

Considering the importance of the ergonomic aspect for information systems in providing an easy use of the computing systems, this paper focuses on the elaboration of a hybrid model for the ergonomic evaluation of information systems that merges a set of inspection dimensions such as accessibility, practicality, emotionality, and technological persuasion. Details on how the model has been constructed and data have been collected are presented. For the evaluation of our model, a situation of an information system for scientific research (SIMArech) in Moroccan Universities has been studied. This model can be used by ergonomist and human factor professionals. It is found that the proposed heuristics can effectively assess the most important dimensions of scientific research information systems

How Assessing Plasticity Design Choices Can Improve UI Quality: A Case Study

International audienceIn Human Computer Interaction, plasticity refers to the capacity of User Interfaces (UIs) to withstand variations of context of use while preserving quality in use. Frequently, insuring more or less smooth transition from one context of use to the other (from the end-user perspective) is conducted ad hoc. To support a more systematic approach for characterizing UI tuning in terms of quality in use along context of use variations, we present an exploratory study focused deliberately on platform aspects. The design process of this particular case study is detailed and all design decisions have been recorded in terms of their influence on UI ergonomic quality, using Ergonomic Criteria. The interesting result is that most design choices when changing the platform lead to the reexamination of the initial designs. Ongoing work is done to support the insight that considering plasticity seems to help in explicitly broadening UI design choices and sharpening the solution

An empirical approach for evaluating the usability of model-driven tools

MDD tools are very useful to draw conceptual models and to automate code generation. Even though this would bring many benefits, wide adoption of MDD tools is not yet a reality. Various research activities are being undertaken to find why and to provide the required solutions. However, insufficient research has been done on a key factor for the acceptance of MDD tools: usability. With the help of end-users, this paper presents a framework to evaluate the usability of MDD tools. The framework will be used as a basis for a family of experiments to get clear insights into the barriers to usability that prevent MDD tools from being widely adopted in industry. To illustrate the applicability of our framework, we instantiated it for performing a usability evaluation of a tool named INTEGRANOVA. Furthermore, we compared the outcome of the study with another usability evaluation technique based on ergonomic criteria.This work has been developed with the support of the Intra European Marie Curie Fellowship Grant 50911302 PIEF-2010, MICINN (TIN2008-00555, PROS-Req TIN2010-19130-C02-02), GVA (ORCA PROMETEO/2009/015), and co-financed with ERDF. We also acknowledge the support of the ITEA2 Call 3 UsiXML (20080026) and financed by the MITYC under the project TSI-020400-2011-20. Our thanks also to Ignacio Romeu for the video data gathering setup.Condori-Fernandez, N.; Panach Navarrete, JI.; Baars, AI.; Vos, TE.; Pastor López, O. (2013). An empirical approach for evaluating the usability of model-driven tools. Science of Computer Programming. 78(11):2245-2258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2012.07.017S22452258781

User-Centred BCI Videogame Design

International audienceThis chapter aims to offer a user-centred methodological framework to guide the design and evaluation of Brain-Computer Interface videogames. This framework is based on the contributions of ergonomics to ensure these games are well suited for their users (i.e., players). It provides methods, criteria and metrics to complete the different phases required by ae human-centred design process. This aims to understand the context of use, specify the user needs and evaluate the solutions in order to define design choices. Several ergonomic methods (e.g., interviews, longitudinal studies, user based testing), objective metrics (e.g., task success, number of errors) and subjective metrics (e.g., mark assigned to an item) are suggested to define and measure the usefulness, usability, acceptability, hedonic qualities, appealingness, emotions related to user experience, immersion and presence to be respected. The benefits and contributions of the user centred framework for the ergonomic design of these Brain-Computer Interface Videogames are discussed

Сombination of usability evaluation of e-learning tools and ergonomic expertise

Проведено аналіз оцінки юзебілиті електронних засобів навчання та ергономічної експертизи. Дано визначення поняттю юзебілиті систем електронного навчання. Наведено критерії, за якими потрібно проводити оцінку юзебілиті та ергономічну експертизу. Обрано метод оцінки юзебілиті. Доведено його придатність у даному контексті. Проаналізовано основні ергономічні критерії. Описано необхідність проведення ергономічної експертизи.Usability has been a hot topic for many years, adding a new dimension when the World Wide Web was introduced and adopted. Many studies have been made on usability evaluation methods in many specific areas, however not so much in E-Learning systems. This study is a report of the latest results review obtained during the scientific research of the author. This is a report on the use of combined both usability evaluation method for E-learning systems and ergonomic expertise. The main purpose of the review is to draw a picture for further researcher who is going to look into the field of usability evaluation for E-Learning systems and its ergonomics

Erg-O: ergonomic optimization of immersive virtual environments

Interaction in VR involves large body movements, easily inducing fatigue and discomfort. We propose Erg-O, a manipulation technique that leverages visual dominance to maintain the visual location of the elements in VR, while making them accessible from more comfortable locations. Our solution works in an open-ended fashion (no prior knowledge of the object the user wants to touch), can be used with multiple objects, and still allows interaction with any other point within user's reach. We use optimization approaches to compute the best physical location to interact with each visual element, and space partitioning techniques to distort the visual and physical spaces based on those mappings and allow multi-object retargeting. In this paper we describe the Erg-O technique, propose two retargeting strategies and report the results from a user study on 3D selection under different conditions, elaborating on their potential and application to specific usage scenarios