Pilot Design of Ergonomic Bench for the Elderly With Anthropometric Approach

With the global growth of elderly population, their increasing need to public and recreational spaces has become a novel challenge. Such spaces should be designed based on ergonomic principles in order to decrease their risk of injury. This research aimed to design an ergonomic bench for the elderly people with respect to their anthropometric dimensions. In this descriptive study, 90 older participants, 24 females and 66 males, aged over 60 years, were recruited by cluster sampling method. A trained ergonomists measured their 13 anthropometric dimensions based on ISO (7250-1:2008). The dimensions of the available benches in the parks were also measured. Then, the fitness of elderly’s anthropometric parameters were compared with the dimensions of the benches (N=100) in the parks. We also explored the problems and difficulties of the using benches by “future workshop technique”. A total of 45 elder subjects were participated in the workshop (recruited by convenience sampling method). They were asked about their problems in using the benches. Their comments and suggestion were sorted and prioritized. Then, using CATIA software and considering the proposed solutions, a pilot ergonomic bench was designed in accordance with the elder anthropometric dimensions. The descriptive and inferential analyses were done by SPSS V. 16. Descriptive results of the anthropometrics dimensions of the older people including Mean, Standard Deviation (SD) as well as percentiles, frequency, cumulative frequency, percentage, Mean and SD for the dimensions of the benches were provided. The study results show a significant difference between the bench seating depth and elderly’s buttock-popliteal length, also between bench seating width and elderly’s buttock width, and finally between bench backrest height and elderly’s shoulder height. There was no significant difference between bench seating height of concrete benches and popliteal height dimension, as well as between elbow rest height of iron benches and arm support height. The elderly take undesirable postures during sitting on incompatible furniture (knee bending, trunk flexion, twisting, etc.).These unnatural postures impose physical strain on them. It is recommended that an anthropometric database of older adults be prepared so that new adjustable furniture can be designed based on these data.