1. Ergonomics and Anthropometrics
Peoples interaction with their products and their sizes

2. Ergonomics & Anthropometric Data
And how it affects designers
Ergonomics is about the relationship of people with products
From how easy it is to open a jar to the discomfort of sitting on a bus to the positioning of the controls in a fighter jet, ergonomics is how a person interacts with a product.
As a designer we always need to consider how easy and comfortable any product will be to use. One of the ways to do this is to look at ANTHROPOMETRIC DATA.
ANTHROPOMETRY is the study of statistics that have been gathered and combined over many years of the sizes of the human body.
As designers we can use this data to decide on the sizes, weights and proportions of our products so as to provide the best ergonomics for the end user.

3. Anthropometric Data Explained
Of course not all people are the same size. There will be huge differences between the heights, weights, and other dimensions due to: gender, age, diet, growth rate, genetic make up and other factors.
Therefore the Anthropometric data needs to be organised in a specific way.
If we were to plot a graph with peoples heights along the bottom and how many people are at that height up the side we end up with a graph that looks like this.
The shape is called a “Bell Curve”
The percentage of people at each height (or weight or whatever) is called the percentile.
The average (mean) size is therefore the 50th percentile. We sometimes use this as the best size to design for. However really we should design for everyone between the 5th and 95th percentile. The top and bottom 5% being just to big or too small to practically design for. Tough luck for them!

4. Example Anthropometric Data#
Female
Male 5%
50%
95% A
690
743
795
739
850 B
181
226
266
188
235
274 C
406
439
479
447
482
520 D
438
478
525
458
499
544 E
540
585
637
569
616
665 F
352
388
428
395
434
476 G
474
513
558
515
559
605