University of Twente Student Theses
The Easy Ergonomist Finder
Goedheer, Sietse (2006) The Easy Ergonomist Finder.
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| Abstract: | The International Ergonomics Association (IEA) was founded in the Netherlands 50 years ago, and because of its 50th anniversary the 2006 world congress of ergonomics will be held in Maastricht. The results of this assignment and the succession thereof (the execution) will be handed to the congress organization as an anniversary present. In 2006, the general theme of the congress is “meeting diversity in ergonomics”. The main idea is that ergonomics must be viewed in a very wide perspective. In the context of this project, “meeting diversity” must be interpreted as meeting new people with all kind of specializations and interests. All congress participants and other ergonomists must be able to meet people of their interest. The goal of this assignment is to design a main idea and an interface concept for an online application, with design guidelines for optional offline components, by analyzing the criteria from the involved parties and generating ideas and concepts based on these criteria and based on creativity. These ideas and concepts lead to a final design. Easy Ergonomist Finder is the name of this project, similar to the name of the designed online application. Everybody who practices or researches ergonomics falls within the target group of this project. There is no restriction to certified ergonomists. Researching the web shows that there are numerous ways to display information comparable to the information on the Easy Ergonomist Finder. But there are a lot of similarities in the analyzed websites. These similarities can often be applied to the Easy Ergonomist Finder. A competition analysis shows that there are websites with similar activities. However, there are significant differences between these websites and the Easy Ergonomist Finder. The Easy Ergonomist Finder takes advantage of these differences optimally to outrun the competition, based on a SWOT analysis. The above leads to a clear set of criteria that the design must comply with. These criteria can be used to evaluate the concepts. People are being asked to participate on the congress, both by addressing them plenary and by asking them individually in the hallways. To convince people to register several ergonomic gurus are approached to be in the first few registrants and act as role model. The main function of the online application is to search for other ergonomists, based on the information they provided about themselves. It is up to the ergonomists to decide what information they want to publish. They have the choice of filling out a lot of information fields. The parts that are left empty won’t be displayed. For the ergonomists it is interesting to enter one or more kinds of contact information. Thereby they can be contacted both during and after the congress. As mentioned above, searching on the website and viewing other ergonomists’ profiles is the most important functionality of the online application. Both these things can only be done when a user is logged in, to protect the information to the outer world. The only functionalities that can be used without logging in are the register function and viewing ergonomic news. The news section’s intention is to make the site more interesting to visit on regular bases. The graphical user interface complies with a lot of ergonomical demands. It is very important when designing an interface with ergonomists as target group that the interface is ergonomically all right. The prototype of the online application can be found on the Cd-Rom that comes with his report. The visitors of the congress are confronted with the Easy Ergonomist Finder. When they enter the congress they are being informed of its existence. They have the possibility to register directly, and to have their photograph taken and put on their profile. To bring the Easy Ergonomist Finder more to people’s attention, ergonomists’ picture, name, slogan and country are projected onto a large screen. This happens at the meeting point situated in the trajectum in the MECC congress centre in Maastricht. The meeting point consists of a lounge where people can chill and talk, and some space where people can work with their laptop. The meeting point is dressed up with elements that support the meeting point’s “contact” theme. One of the elements that can be found at the meeting point is a large telephone. This telephone controls the slide show mentioned above. Pressing a button changes the type of transition between the slides. Goal hereof is to trigger people’s interest. This is strengthened by the “un-ergonomic illustrations” on the telephone’s buttons. The “datacloud”, an application invented by Axis Media Ontwerpers, is an interesting way to implement all the ideas. The datacloud has a lot of functionality that can be used for the Easy Ergonomist Finder. It has a graphic user interface that encourages people to use it and browse around in the Easy Ergonomist Finder. The datacloud does have two disadvantages. It is unknown how the datacloud will function with large amounts of people and companies. Furthermore it requires someone to enter or change information. With up to ten thousandth ergonomists that is going to be a lot of work. All together and with the recommendations from chapter 7 taken into account, there’s a clear concept for both the website and the introduction on the congress. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Clients: | ErgoS Engineering & Ergonomics |
| Faculty: | ET: Engineering Technology |
| Subject: | 21 art forms |
| Programme: | Industrial Design BSc (56955) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/58204 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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