Developing a Better Design Process: Redesigning the Organization to Produce More Ergonomic Designs
This paper explores the development of a systematic process for effectively considering in the product design process the ergonomics requirements of all who will interact with a product during its entire life cycle. Because of its very broad scope relative to ergonomics, the process has huge organizational and management implications. Focus in this paper is given to: the steps and rationale involved in developing the process so that ownership and buy-in would result along with a sound and valid process that would be likely to be used; organizational and management implications for communicating and implementing the process including concurrent engineering, accountability, and resource availability. Results of application of the process are illustrated by several case studies from divisions of a large corporation. Organizational structures and relationships that encourage successful partial implementations are explored. Deficiencies in the traditional product design process are explored from motivational and perspective limitation standpoints.