• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.75-83
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• 2007

Why do some countries walk on the right and others on the left? People have a dominant hand which leads to a natural tendency to favor one side of the road or another depending on the means of transportation being used. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the stereotype of Korean regarding preferred walking direction in encountering various facilities and provide the appropriate information to traffic policy makers. Six hundred Korean male and female subjects aging from 12 to 83 were selected to investigate the various statistics about their preferred walking direction and their employment characteristics on walking diverse facilities. The walking directions of eleven different facilities were asked along with other relative subjects' characteristics(e.g., age, gender, hand and foot dominance) to determine the relationship among these obtained data. The descriptive statistics showed that 73.7% and 26.3% were preferred walking right and left direction respectively. Moreover, various statistical analysis revealed that general tendency of walking direction was varied by hand and foot dominances. There were strong tendency that right-handed people prefer walking right side of the road and vise versa, hence this should be considered in setting up traffic policies. As a concluding remark, it is better to design traffic policies and regulations in the way that peoples' preference and expectation.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.53-60
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to provide basic data, such as exerting muscle power of the lower-extremity, EMG test and pressure distribution for designing ergonomic workstation in sitting posture. The exerting muscle power of the lower-extremity was measured by PRIMUS in 4 postures of 90$^{\circ}$, 120$^{\circ}$, 150$^{\circ}$ and 180$^{\circ}$. And performed ANOVA test on Max. and Mean 100%MVC. In EMG test for surveying muscle mobiligation, 5 muscles(Rectus Femoris, Vastus Lateralis, Gastrocnemius, Soleus, Tibialis Anterior) were employed. Additional experiment in pressure distribution in sitting posture by Pliance(16$\time$16 poles), Max. pressure was measured and performed ANOVA test on the results. Concludingly, sitting posture with 120$^{\circ}$ lower-extremity is the best design criterion for ergonomic workstation in sitting posture.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.585-591
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• 2012

Objective: The aim of this study is to propose the contactless gesture-based interface on smart mobile devices for especially rhythm action games. Background: Most existing approaches about interactions of smart mobile games are tab on the touch screen. However that way is such undesirable for someone or for sometimes, because of the disabled person, or the inconvenience that users need to touch/tab specific devices. Moreover more importantly, new interaction can derive new possibilities from stranded game genre. Method: In this paper, I present a smart mobile game with contactless gesture-based interaction and the interfaces using computer vision technology. Discovering the gestures which are easy to recognize and research of interaction system that fits to game on smart mobile device are conducted as previous studies. A combination between augmented reality technique and contactless gesture interaction is also tried. Results: The rhythm game allows a user to interact with smart mobile devices using hand gestures, without touching or tabbing the screen. Moreover users can feel fun in the game as other games. Conclusion: Evaluation results show that users make low failure numbers, and the game is able to recognize gestures with quite high precision in real time. Therefore the contactless gesture-based interaction has potentials to smart mobile game. Application: The results are applied to the commercial game application.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.81-85
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• 2009

Work related musculoskeletal disorders(WMSDs) was a leading cause of sick leave and injuries in the industries of our country. Posture was an important consideration in the design of work method and workplaces, because it affected the ability of workers to use various equipments and influenced how long they could perform their job without feeling discomfort, fatigue, and musculoskeletal disorders. Imbalanced lower limb postures such as a squatting posture were awkward working postures common to the shipbuilding shops, farms, automobiles assembly lines in our country. Different awkward working postures were known to be associated with specific musculoskeletal disorders. Eight postures in lower limb postures divided into balanced and imbalanced postures were evaluated by electromyographic(EMG) activity for lower limb muscles. Twelve male subjects participated in this study. This paper was to analyze the effects of lower limb muscles workload according to lower limb postures(knee angle) and working time. The ANOVA results showed that most EMG root mean square(RMS) values were statistically significant effect according to lower limb postures(knee angle) and working time. Therefore, the results of this study will provide the basis to evaluate workload of lower limb postures correctly adopted by workers in various jobs and the ergonomic reference to prevent WMSDs.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.27-31
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• 2009

To evaluate the usability of a Kimchi refrigerator, we performed an evaluation test that consisted of an experiment and a post-hoc questionnaire survey. In this study, we focused on the older women who have less physical and cognitive ability than younger women. In physical usability, there was no significant difference between the older and the younger subject group. However, there was some significant statistical difference in the results of cognitive usability test. When the subjects debriefed their operations after finishing the experiment, the all subjects in the older group reported the difficulties in identifying the labels and icons in the control panel and in understanding operation sequences. Also, they couldn't learn and remember the operation procedures well. Based on the analysis of the video protocols, some causes of the problems were found and then several improvement ideas were suggested.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.103-112
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• 2007

This study was designed to validate Spreading Activation Theory (SAT) for an evaluation methodology for menu structure through Eye-Tracking approach. When a visual search is on the way, more eye fixations and time are necessary to visually process complex and vague area. From the aspect of recognition, well-designed menu structures were hypothesized to have fewer numbers of fixations and shorter duration because well-designed menu structures reflecting the users' mental model would be well matched with the product's menu structure, resulting in reducing the number of fixations and duration time. The results show that the shorter reaction times for SAT had significantly fewer numbers of fixation and shorter duration time as the hypothesis for this study stated. In conclusion, SAT was proved to be an effective evaluation methodology for menu structure with the eye tracking equipment. In addition, using SAT instead of the real performance experiment would be useful for designing user-centered systems and convenient information structures because SAT was proven to be the theoretical background for design and evaluation of menu structures.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.81-88
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• 2007

The objective of this study was to investigate the validity of the digital ergonomic simulation (DES) method as a prospective alternative to the ergonomic analyses conducted by experts. The DES method utilizes commercial digital manufacturing software, and can compute the RULA scores continuously throughout the simulated work cycle. It was shown in a case study that the accuracy and objectivity of the DES method are superior to those obtained by experts. Also, it was demonstrated that the DES method has a distinct capability to simulate and validate a proposed work plan. Major limitations of the current DES method lie in the extensive time and efforts required for accurate digital simulation, which may be overcome through an automatic module for RULA data acquisition and a motion capture system.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.79-90
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• 1996

A research project was conducted to assess the levels of noise exposed to "Noraebang" users and potential hazards to noise-induced hearing loss due to commercial Noraebang noise. A two-way, mixed-factors factorial design was employed for the experiment using independent variables of "noise source" (no- singer, 1-singer, and 2-singer conditions) and "music type" (Trot, Ballad, and Rock music) with 18 normal hearing subjects. Each singer group sang 5 popular songs of each music type in each signing condition, whereas background music was just played for the no-singer condition. For each music played/sung, equivalent continuous sound pressure levels and maximum sound pressure levels were measured for data analysis purposes. Pure-tone audiometry was applied for measuring subjects' hearing threshold levels before and after exposure to Noraebgang noise. The statistical analyses indicate that average continuous noise levels due to Noraebang leisure environment were very serious, especially when two people were singing (higher than 95 dBA). Furthermore, maximum noise levels often exceeded the OSHA's non-premissible 115 dBA level. Worse yet, hearing loss assessment implies that Noraebang facilities may pose a serious threat to noise-induced hearing loss, based on 6-8 dB loss at 125 Hz and 8 dB loss at 4000 Hz after about 1-hour Noraebang noise exposure.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.85-96
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• 2006

Main control room(MCR) man-machine interface(MMI) design of advanced nuclear power plants(NPPs) such as APR(advanced power reactor)-1400 can be validated through performance-based tests to determine whether it acceptably supports safe operation of the plant. In this work, plant performance, personnel task, situation awareness, workload, teamwork, and anthropometric/physiological factor are considered as factors for the human performance evaluation. For development of measures in each of the factors, techniques generally used in various industries and empirically proven to be useful are adopted as main measures and some helpful techniques are developed in order to complement the main measures. Also the development of the measures is addressed based on the theoretical background. Finally we discuss the way in which the measures can be effectively integrated and then HUPESS(HUman Performance Evaluation Support System) which is in development based on the integrated way is briefly introduced.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.117-125
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• 2011

While human error happens repeatedly in the semiconductor industry in Korea, which has brought a tremendous loss from manpower, welfare etc., there are limitations to human error prevention activities. When a semiconductor company introduces new machines and facilities from Japan or Germany, the companies often do not consider human factors in the design. Also, semiconductor companies are so occupied with promoting increased productivity, their attention to human errors has been pushed aside. Negative aspects of technical exchange associated with safety management are one aspect of the industry's nature. A semiconductor company recently began acknowledging on the back of TQM(Total Quality Management) that human error has a decisive effect on the safety. There are a number of uncontrollable and hard to handle event sets because the nature of these events with a human error may often be threatened or very intensive. It is strongly required that systemic studies should be performed to grasp the whole picture of a current situation for hazard factors. This study aims to examine the human error approach through the case of human error prevention field activities in a semiconductor industry compared with the activities and experience in nuclear power plants.