Proactive Ergonomics in Refrigerator Concept Development

Abstract Proactive Ergonomics means to pre-test the human factors features of a product in an early step of development (design or prototyping), modifying it, re-performing the test and so on. The goal is to apply an iterative process to reach a final definitive solution. This work presents a case study on refrigerator concepts development based on a Design for All approach. The first design concept was created through a participatory workshop supported by reference literature data about arthropometrical and functional parameters and by results from ethnographic observation. This also led to the design of a dedicated experimental protocol for evaluating the physical ergonomics characteristics of products and mock up through a comparative analysis. Using a bestseller’s refrigerator as reference, we evaluated comparatively, our new concepts. The results were very significant and demonstrated a consistent improvement of the ergonomic quality of the concepts with respect to the standard product. The quantitative ergonomic evaluation has been validated by subjective methods.