Ergonomics

The purpose of design is to serve the population particularly for a useful purpose. Ergonomics is an element in design that emphasis the concept of serving the population for a useful purpose. The main goal of ergonomics design is to prevent injuries from happening to the user of a particular design. According to Wikipedia Ergonomic is “the scientific discipline concerned with understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principle, data, and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.”   In this case, I will use athletic shoes as an example. Safety, comfort, ease to use, performance or productivity, and aesthetics of design are five elements that characterize ergonomic study. This object must fit the characteristics of ergonomic study in order to fulfill its role.

As a person who has been a tri athlete in high school, I can say that specialized shoes for particular sports are very important. For instance, you use soccer cleats to play soccer and it is unsafe to do otherwise. There could be a risk of injury if you do not use the appropriate shoes for a sport because shoes are designed to fit the biological construction of your foot and designed to fit the purpose of the sport. Therefore, shoes fulfill the safety characteristic of ergonomics.

In addition to being safe, the comfort of shoes is also important. Comfort also reduces injury to the player. If you are not comfortable in shoes while you are playing a sport, the pain may distract the player making them loose their concentration, and incraesing their chances of injury. Comfort can reduce injury. In addition, it is very pleasing to the athlete.

Ease to use is convenient. In this day and age it seems as though convenience is important. With so much going on the last thing someone wants to worry about is putting on their shoes or putting in extra work while using their shoes. Therefore, athletic shoes were designed like regular tennis shoes in their dimensions and characteristics. They can be put on easily like every other normal shoe, but their purpose is different, to serve the needs of an athlete.

Performance is crucial. Recently, sketchers has come out with athletic shoes that tone your legs and butt. It is what makes the product appealing to the customers or in this case athlete. Performance is important to an athlete because it means productivity. Productivity means accomplishing things during a game.

Aesthetics of design is pleasing. Just because something is safe doesn’t mean it has to be boring. People like to buy nice things even if beauty is not the purpose of the product is. In addition, sometimes the aesthetics of a design can be beautiful as well as useful.

Ergonomics has five elements safety, comfort, and ease to use, performance, and aesthetics of design. Athletic shoes, as explained, fits the characteristics of ergonomics. Ergonomics is important to the consumer because it prevents injury which will eventually reduce the cost of medical expenses and this idea is pleasing to all.