A Comparative Study of Design Methodologies to Integrate Ergonomics Requirements into Design

During recent decades, due to demand for customer-oriented product design, designers and manufacturers have been more attentive to define customer requirements during initial stage of design process. As such, importance of integrating ergonomics, particularly for capturing customer requirements, has become an essential activity. The literature provides evidence of numerous studies focusing on various design methodologies that are helpful for incorporating customer requirements at initial design stage. However, existence of multiple design methodologies makes it difficult for designers to choose one over the other. Further, ambiguity among designers while selecting any one of these methodologies may lead to an unnecessary increase in lead time for product design process. Therefore, in order to address this specific issue, a comparative review study across design methodologies with an objective to integrate ergonomics requirements has been conducted and reported here. The focus of the study is on integrating ergonomics requirements in design in initial design stages, specifically to include conceptual design, embodiment design, and detailed design. This paper reports a critical analysis of the applicability of these methodologies. The outcome of the study would be beneficial for designers (with an intention to contribute toward ergonomic led innovation) to choose design methodologies judiciously and importance of customer requirements capturing at the initial stage of the design process.