• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.51-63
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• 2009

In the field of ergonomics, it is evident that participatory action research methodology could contribute to reduce risk factors of work related musculoskeletal disorders(WMSDs). The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a participatory ergonomics in reducing the incidence rate and severity of WMSDs in the tire manufacturing company. In this study, an action committee comprising 13 members was organized in the tire manufacturing company. The action group participated at every research process, education and training, assessment and intervention of risk factors, and early detection and management of WMSDs during the 3 years(2004-2006). The prevention programs contributed to an overall reduction in incidence rate by approximately 37.2%, and lost workdays and workers' compensation costs by approximately 55.1%. But, the incidence rate increased 29.0%, and compensation costs increased 59.0% in the first-year setting programs, and both the incidence rate and compensation costs decreased after the second-year managing programs. And, the reduction rates(63.2%) of insurance cases is higher than that(9.7%) of non-insurance cases. The results showed that participatory ergonomics programs may be effective in reducing the incidence and severity rate of WMSDs.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.709-713
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• 2010

The objective of this paper is to report how workers' actively participate in a participatory ergonomics (PE) program, and how this program resulted in improved working conditions and decreased occurrence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). A major tire manufacturing company in Korea was studied. Most of the activities in the PE program were designed and actually practiced by the workers and their union. The results revealed some positive effects of applying a PE program to the employees. It was shown that incidence of the WMSDs as well as the lost work days and the economic cost incurred by the WMSDs decreased with the PE program.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.9-19
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• 2008

Work-related musculoskeletal hazards in a paper-making industry were examined to explore ergonomic interventions in a participatory approach for mitigating the hazards. Manual tasks occurred in this paper-making industry were quite different with ordinary assembly industry where individual workers perform certain specified tasks repetitively. Workers used to perform varieties of team-based irregular manual tasks to interact with the facilities. Among 96 manual jobs investigated, 44 potential hazardous jobs were screened during basic investigation phase and finally 16 hazardous jobs were identified by the detailed analysis phase. The major hazardous factors were awkward postures and excessive weights. Possible ways of intervention were developed, reviewed and proposed by an ergonomics team comprised of staffs and engineers from various departments and ergonomics specialist from outside the company. The proposed intervention ideas were evaluated and modified by the workers and union representatives in terms of usability and comfort. Implemented interventions including mechanization, automation, and improvement of tools and equipments provided fairly promising results.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.171-174
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• 2016

Effective and sustainable prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WR-MSDs) remains a challenge for preventers and policy makers. Coordination of stakeholders involved in the prevention of WR-MSDs is a key factor that requires greater reflection on common knowledge and shared representation of workers' activities among stakeholders. Information on workers' strategies and operational leeway should be the core of common representations, because it places workers at the center of the "work situation system" considered by the intervention models. Participatory ergonomics permitting debates among stakeholders about workers' activity and strategies to cope with the work constraints in practice could help them to share representations of the "work situation system" and cooperate. Sharing representation therefore represents a useful tool for prevention, and preventers should provide sufficient space and time for dialogue and discussion of workers' activities among stakeholders during the conception, implementation, and management of integrated prevention programs.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.535-550
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• 2016

Objective: To enhance user experience of the product by using "wow" materials and parts, a framework for participatory emotional design and evaluation was proposed and validated through a case study in this paper. Background: Customers in recent days value a product which provides new feeling and images they want to get while interacting with it beyond its function, quality, and usability. Since the product consists of various parts and materials, "wow" materials and parts which can affect the customer's feeling and emotions are the essential components for changing the user experience. Method: A framework for participatory and human sensibility ergonomic design was considered and applied on developing the aesthetically and emotionally affecting glass panels of changing colors. Design experts defined a target market for this multicolor glass panels and modified the existing designing goal. Constraints for this design modification were identified by market trend research and consulting with the company which owns the technology for checking out its feasibility. The company developed and provided prototype samples as well as their competing materials. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the emotional quality was conducted to validate whether the design goal was achieved successfully. Results: The target market for the developing materials was defined as finishing for the buildings. The designing goal was set as to feed new visual sensation of clean and colorful images. The emotional quality of two different types of multicolor glass panels and an ordinary unicolor panel were evaluated quantitatively with semantic differential method. Results showed that the emotion of the subjects for the multicolor glass panels can be abstracted into two dimensions; named 'colorfulness' and 'harmony'. It was found that the developed samples got higher scores in emotional quality for both dimensions compared to the ordinary one. Age was found to be a significant factor for evaluating the emotional quality of colorfulness. Conclusion and Applications: The proposed framework is a valid approach for enhancing the user experience of the product by participatory design of emotional materials and parts. This framework can be applied easily on the emotional design and evaluation of different materials and components.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.515-523
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• 2012

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate users' intuitive stereotypes on non-touch gestures and establish the gesture dictionary that can be applied to gesture-based interaction designs. Background: Recently, the interaction based on non-touch gestures is emerging as an alternative for natural interactions between human and systems. However, in order for non-touch gestures to become a universe interaction method, the studies on what kinds of gestures are intuitive and effective should be prerequisite. Method: In this study, as applicable domains of non-touch gestures, four devices(i.e. TV, Audio, Computer, Car Navigation) and sixteen basic operations(i.e. power on/off, previous/next page, volume up/down, list up/down, zoom in/out, play, cancel, delete, search, mute, save) were drawn from both focus group interview and survey. Then, a user participatory design was performed. The participants were requested to design three gestures suitable to each operation in the devices, and they evaluated intuitiveness, memorability, convenience, and satisfaction of their derived gestures. Through the participatory design, agreement scores, frequencies and planning times of each distinguished gesture were measured. Results: The derived gestures were not different in terms of four devices. However, diverse but common gestures were derived in terms of kinds of operations. In special, manipulative gestures were suitable for all kinds of operations. On the contrary, semantic or descriptive gestures were proper to one-shot operations like power on/off, play, cancel or search. Conclusion: The touchless gesture dictionary was established by mapping intuitive and valuable gestures onto each operation. Application: The dictionary can be applied to interaction designs based on non-touch gestures. Moreover, it will be used as a basic reference for standardizing non-touch gestures.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.89-99
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• 2004

A comprehensive psychophysical scaling system, multiple-modality magnitude estimation system (MMES) has been designed to measure subjective multidimensional human perception. Unlike paper-based magnitude estimation systems, the MMES has an additional auditory peripheral cue that varies with corresponding visual magnitude. As the simplest, purely psychological case, bimodal divided-attention conditions were simulated to establish the superiority of the MMES. Subjects were given brief presentations of pairs of simultaneous stimuli consisting of visual line-lengths and auditory white-noise levels. In the visual or auditory focused-attention conditions, only the line-lengths or the noise levels perceived should be reported respectively. On the other hand, in the divided-attention conditions, both the line-lengths and the noise levels should be reported. There were no significant differences among the different attention conditions. Human performance was better when the proportion of magnitude in stimulus pairs were identically presented. The additional auditory cues in the MMES improved the correlations between the magnitude of stimuli and MMES values in the divided-attention conditions.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.55-80
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• 2004

Multichannel on digital TV not only gave opportunities to the TV audience to view a wide range of programs. but also made it difficult for them to search for the program which they plan to view among over 1000 programs broadcasted on more than 100 channels. In this paper the functions of EPG (Electronic Program Guides) required by the users on digital TV were derived from the systematic analysis of multichannel viewing situations. In the situation analysis the situations where they viewed programs on more than 100 channels were generated systematically and the viewing processes in those situations were analyzed to identify user needs and derive the required functions of EPG. We surveyed the viewing behavior of the audience who subscribed to a digital satellite broadcast. SkyPerfecTV. in Tokyo. Japan. The purpose of the survey was to verify the validity of the functions derived from the situation analysis and to identify hidden user needs which were difficult to in the situation analysis. The functions were implemented on a working prototype of EPG based on a digital TV simulator which broadcasts 500 programs on 100 channels and can be controlled by three working prototypes of personal remote controllers. The working prototype will be used in Participatory Design to make it possible for the users to experience and verify the usefulness of the required functions of EPG and also find problems in user interface design of EPG