Abstract
Kimchi refrigerator is a specific refrigerator for Kimchi, Korean traditional fermented food. It has been fast popularized since it was developed about ten years ago. In this study, a survey was conducted with 103 female voluntary respondents to understand the customer satisfaction of the Kimchi refrigerator in the aspect of physical use. The respondents showed a high satisfaction for the use of refrigerators. It was, however, shown that they felt highly uncomfortable in using the refrigerator. In particular, the high discomfort was related to the fact that the customer should bend her torso very much to put Kimchi containers into the refrigerator, take them out of it, or clean its inside. Seventy-five percent of the respondents reported the experience of body-part pains and 58.4% of them reported pain experience in the back. It is presumed that these results are highly correlated to the top-cover design of the refrigerator, which is the most popular type to improve its performance of maintaining proper temperature. Therefore, the developers should consider these usability problems related to the refrigerator and try to enhance its usability by adopting ergonomics in the design stage.
