Surveying the comfort perception of the ergonomic design of bluetooth earphones

Bluetooth earphones can facilitate communications among workers engaged in manual (e.g., professional driver)or visual tasks (e.g., security guard). If workers remove their Bluetooth earphones due to poor fit, then communication effectiveness will decline, especially during manual or visual tasks.

(1) To identify which design properties of Bluetooth earphones can contribute to user comfort, and (2) to identify if person characteristics (i.e., gender and ear shapes in this study) are related to differences in comfort perception during earphone use.

198 participants were recruited for this study.Individuals used four models of Bluetooth earphones in randomized order while performing computer tasks and then completed questionnaires on comfort perception specifically designed for this study. The 2 × 3 × 4 mixed design analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to investigate the effects of gender, ear shape, and model condition.

The results indicated that there were significant differences in model on comfort perception.

For earplugs, the shape of the earphone and the elasticity of material are important ergonomic concerns to improve the comfort perception. In addition, the adjustable tail length is an important ergonomic design property for the ear-hook. The information gained in this study should be useful in improving the ergonomic fitness of Bluetooth earphones.