Designing for the Life Span Segment 4

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Information Sources on Anthropometrics:

The collection of anthropometric or "body measurement" information began in World War II when the "fit" of individuals in complex machinery of war required an understanding of body sizes in a more consistent manner than had been previously collected.
After research on pilots revealed that 80% of all losses were on first combat missions, the issues of control and display became a subject of study. This resulted in consistent arrangement of all controls - and shape coding - to offset mistakes in combat.
Henry Dreyfus interpreted body dimensioning information taken from paratroopers for his first edition of Measure of Man published in 1947.
No other primary source on anthropometrics was published until the 1960s.

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Body measurement - anthropometrics - is critical and fundamental information to the design process. Not only has information about older adults been lacking in most data gathering efforts, information about other age segments is also incomplete.

Traditional anthropometrics is a point-to-point measurement of specific locations of the body. Traditional measurements can include well over 100 measurements, but such studies are rarely undertaken. The last traditional measurement study that incorporated young and older adults was conducted in 1962... 40 years ago. The latest study, the CAESAR surface anthropometry study (mentioned in later slides) excluded adults over the age of 65... a major flaw in the program and data collection process.

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Designing for the Life Span Segment 4

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Slide 39 Content

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