Rutgers University

- Anthropometrics—the sizes of people
- Physiology—the way the body works
- Cognitive psychology—the way the mind works
- Sociology—the way people relate to each other
- Cultural anthropology—the human condition
- Ecology—the interdependence of living things

Hierarchy of Complexity

The constraints are complex enough to demand the core skills of
design, but the problems are well understood and have been
evolving slowly since industrial design emerged as a new
discipline in response to the Industrial Revolution.

Human factors work at the office of Henry
Dreyfuss, anthropometric information for the designer is easy to
find, by referring to the book The Measure of Man, or the
reference cards in Humanscale, which present the salient
dimensions of people of different statures, gender, age, and ethnic
background.

Anthropometrics

When you are concerned about the constraints that will
matter to people when you are designing computers and things
that are enhanced by electronic behaviors, you need a much more
rigorous understanding of the way the mind works. When the
design context includes machine intelligence as well as human
intelligence, the design team will benefit from the expertise of a
cognitive psychologist and will also need designers who are
skilled at designing interactions.

Cognitive psychology

Sociologists can help members of a design
team understand the implications of this and to operate in the
more abstract realm of designing services, where you are affected
more by relationships among people as well as between users and
objects or interfaces. Although services have been around for a
long time,the sudden expansion of technology enabled services—
and hence service design as a discipline—is still very new

The addition of the expertise of sociologists to a design team
is especially important when the nature of the constraints is
systemic.When we are designing connected systems of products,
services, and spaces, which are used in real time, the brain of any
designer who tries to absorb all of the constraints is likely to
explode. We are better equipped to face the complexity as an
interdisciplinary team, with a collective consciousness, and the
ability to create designs as a group or team rather than as
individuals.

Design Science and Sociology

At first thought, sustainable design
seems to be in direct opposition to the nature of the consumer
society that industrial designers and interaction designers strive to
enhance, and is thus a challenging subject for designers to come
to grips with. Organizations and processes are emerging that
allow the design team to understand and analyze the implications
of their designs on sustainability, including the use of materials,
energy, and the full lifecycle from “cradle to cradle.”7 This
knowledge is still immature, making design for a sustainable
planet an intuitive rather than exact science so far.The designer
can intuitively synthesize a complex set of requirements, but the
right information has to be there to draw on. Sustainability is still
at the level of complexity where the science is not yet well
established.

Ecology in Design

If the design context includes what the
person is doing as well as the things that they are using, the
constraints need to include the way the human body works, or
physiology, as well as the sizes of people.When you are designing
a chair for work, you must consider the danger that long periods
of sitting may cause back strain, which demands that you
understand the structure of the human spine and the muscles that
support it; this is not a constraint when you are designing a casual
couch or a bar stool

Once we delve into the specifics of an active context like this,
the designer may find that the issues are too complicated to
understand and act on intuitively; this is when the partnership
between designer and a human factors specialist, in these
examples a physiologist, becomes essential.The basic complexity
of design constraints still demands subconscious synthesis as well
as collaboration between everyone in the multidisciplinary team,
but a special connection is needed between designer and
physiologist, to allow them to be innovative in the human aspect
of the solution.

Physiology in Design

Cultural anthropologists can help people in a development organization understand the nature of cultural differences, which probably will not be intuitively obvious to them without some direct experience of the variations. There are also variations of culture within a single market, as different groups of people have unique anthropological characteristics, based on their occupation, background, or
interests.

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