Ergonomics, Codes, and Proxemics

Ergonomics "helps designers understand how to best address the needs of the user through theory, data, methods, resulting in an optimized overall experience for users."

Proxemics is the interaction of people with other people. for example how close they sit to each other on a bench.

For studio 9-17-08 we had to draw our Shelter Buses and show the Ergonomics, Codes, and Proxemics of each design.

I drew a few of the Ergonomics, and one Code

Essay about our experience:

Symbol group 6's experience with the various requirements to support human activities and needs at first was confusion and frustration because of misunderstanding the intentions of the exercise at first. Even after clarification, there was still a level of frustration because of the limits which caused several aspects of our designs to change. We also found that making a diagram was no longer quite as simple as it used to be. Suddenly we had to look up dimensions and numbers to apply to our diagram. We would recommend to other designers that they attempt to consider the needs of their clients and coding early on in the design process so that later on the changes won't be so drastic when they try and accommodate their design to fit the standards. This will save them a lot of problems later on. Codes help design by creating generalization and making people familiar with the objects the codes are applied to even if they haven’t seen these objects in that particular context before.The client will recognize a door frame for example because that is the size of a door frame in every other building they have entered. We anticipate that codes will change our work by making the design process more structured. This will both add to the ease and difficulty. With codes in place, suddenly we know the dimensions for our design, but it also limits to some extent what we can do. Keeping actual standards in mind means that we can no longer pick arbitrary numbers for a hallway.