Ergonomics in Building Design

About this course.

Ergonomics, also known as human factors, is the discipline of designing places, tasks, tools and systems to fit the people who use them, rather than forcing people to adapt to designs that suit them poorly. Applied to the built environment, it means shaping buildings and spaces around real human bodies, abilities, senses and ways of thinking — how people reach, move, see, hear, understand and feel comfortable. It matters because environments that fit people are safer, more comfortable, more productive, more accessible and more inclusive, whereas environments that ignore human factors create injury risk, discomfort, confusion, wasted effort and exclusion. This module introduces the concept and its importance in general terms and is not professional advice.

The central idea of ergonomics is a reversal of a common but flawed instinct in design: instead of designing something and then expecting people to cope with it, ergonomics starts with people and designs to suit them. People come in a wide range of body sizes and shapes, strengths, ages, sensory abilities and cognitive styles, and they are affected by their physical surroundings in predictable ways. Good ergonomic design takes that human variability as the starting point and asks how a space or task can be arranged so that it works well, and safely, for the range of people who will use it. This is why ergonomics is sometimes summed up in the phrase "fit the task to the person, not the person to the task" — and in the built environment, "fit the building to its users".