Structured ergonomic guidance in early design phases by analysing the user-product interaction

Gathering information for an early, proactive integration of ergonomic user requirements is challenging due to the unstructured character of available knowledge. Knowledge acquisition and processing is therefore costly and time-consuming. This contribution presents and evaluates InProCo, an approach for structured ergonomic guidance that aims to improve accessibility and clarity of ergonomic requirements in early design phases by providing interaction-based ergonomic properties. InProCo reduces the complexity of gathering knowledge and provide a novel way to describe interactions. Within a three-stage evaluation process, a survey assessed standard interactions for completeness, the output given by the graphical user interface of the approach (GUI) was evaluated for correctness and the knowledge base was validated by comparing the approaches output with properties identified by participants within a one-day workshop. The results showed that there are enough predefined standard interactions, the output of the GUI is valid and the knowledge base contains high quality data. Practitioner Summary: InProCo is an approach that provides structured interaction-based ergonomic properties to improve accessibility and clarity of ergonomic requirements in early design phases. This contribution presents and evaluates InProCo building the prerequisite for further use in an industrial context.