1,721,004 research outputs found
Comfort driven design of innovative products: the case of the personalized mattress
No full textThe application of ergonomic principles to the design of processes, workplaces and organizations is
not only a way to respond to legal requirements but also an indispensable premise for any company seeking to
pursue a business logic. The evolution of Human-centred design brings designers to focus their attention not
only to the ergonomic performances of products and processes but, also, to the wellbeing of the customer/worker
when interacts with the product. This wellbeing is often translated as the state of perceived (dis)comfort while
performing an action. So, in recent years, methods that allow for an objective evaluation of perceived comfort,
in terms of postural, physiological, cognitive and environmental comfort, have received a great deal of attention
from researchers. The need to have an objective method to evaluate the (dis)comfort perception is definitively
due to the will of introducing the comfort evaluation in the early stage of the product development plan, and the
necessity to imagine and develop new methods for a preventive evaluation (often made on the digital model of
the product) of the future perception of (dis)comfort of the customer. This works deal with the experience of
designing an innovative product whose product-development-plan is centred on the customer perceived comfort: a personalized mattress. The mattress is the typical product whose relevance in everyday life of people is
under-evaluated. People usually spend from 1/4 to 1/3 of their life on it, but nobody spends more than some
minutes for choosing the right one when buying it. Fortunately, this trend is quickly changing and the customer
pays more attention and takes information about producers and product characteristics before to buy a product.
This trend is more evident in the market of high-performance (that means high price) mattress. Valflex is the
luxury brand of Rinaldi Group S.r.l., one of the main player in the world of luxury mattresses’ manufacturing
companies. This company, together with University of Salerno, has developed methodologies both in terms of
preventive comfort evaluation and in comfort-driven design. This work explains the results obtained through
the profitable collaboration that allowed to develop two patents and a new reconfigurable mattress, easy to
manufacture, whose layout can be tuned on the anthropometric data of the customer to improve the comfort
experience during the sleep
A comfort evaluation tool for sitting postures: the case of Library chairs
No full textAccording to ergonomic researches regarding a good sitting posture, the chair, the desk and the
objects on the desk, have to be aligned in a certain way to ensure to users a natural curve of the back in order
to prevent musculoskeletal disorders. A brief observation among the main Scientific Technology Library
inside the University campus showed that students used to complain about neck and lumbar pain, especially
after a study day. Thus, a sitting posture comfort analysis had been performed on chairs inside the library. A
long-time sitting posture during the daily study activity had been simulated with fifteen volunteer students
performing 1-hour tests (divided into four tasks of 15 minutes each). Subjective perceptions had been
gathered through questionnaires rating on a 5-point Likert scale both the expected comfort at the beginning of
the experiment, and the Localized Postural Comfort at the end of each task. Moreover, just before the end of
each task, postural angles had been detected by photographic acquisition and processed by Kinovea®; in
addition, CAMan® software had been used to calculate the (dis)comfort indexes by detected postural angles.
Finally, subjective and objective data had been statistically processed and compared. Results showed the
lumbar area as the most suffering area (lower perceived comfort) while perceived (dis)comfort was
independent on participants and tasks, but dependent on the time
School combo-desk comfort assessment: a method for weighing postural factors that affect the overall perceived comfort while performing different activities
No full textt In recent years, a growing interest in ergonomics and comfort perception in secondary schools and universities
can be detected, with the aim of going beyond the UNI-EN regulations and understanding how practically improve
students’ perceived comfort during lessons. The aim of this study was to analyse the discomfort perceived by students
while sitting on combo-desk during lessons. A statistical sample of 20 healthy students performed a combination of three
different tasks in two sessions - listening, reading on a tablet and writing - in a mixed sequence. Subjective perceptions
were investigated through questionnaires, in which the expected comfort and the overall one were rated on a 10-point
comfort scale and the perceived comfort on a 5-point Likert scale. Subject’s postures were acquired non-invasively using
cameras; Kinovea® software was used to detect postural angles directly on pictures; the acquired angles were used for
the virtual-postural analysis, using a DHM (Digital Human Modelling) software; CaMAN® software was used to obtain
an objective measure of the postural comfort. Once correlations between subjective and objective data were calculated,
the results of the analysis were used to define the influence of each body part comfort on the overall perceived comfort
and to quantify the weight of each factor influencing the overall perception. Finally, some guidelines to modify the combodesk design, in order to increase the level of perceived comfort, were developed
Car Control knob usability: a posture based comfort assessment
No full textToday, people spend much more time in the car, especially the ones that drive for job (taxi driver,
couriers, truck drivers, etc.); for this reason, several studies have been performed on car interiors in order to
improve the driver and passenger comfort experience. The aim of this study was the evaluation of perceived
comfort while using the infotainment board system inside a C-segment car MY2012. The Car manufacturer
claims to guarantee connectivity to its users, but also to ensure the same "web comfort" of a PC or smartphone
even when it is on the go. To prove that, a sample of twenty-three students performed three different tasks in a
Mercedes class A180 CDI EXECUTIVE. Postural angles of students had been acquired non-invasively by
cameras and processed by KINOVEA® software. A further virtual-postural analysis had been realized with a
DHM (Digital Human Modeling) software. Subjective postural comfort has been evaluated through
questionnaires by which participants were asked to rate on a 10-point Comfort scale the expected comfort
before beginning the test and on a 9-point Likert scale the perceived comfort after using the knob. Objective
postural comfort had been gathered through CaMAN® software. Finally, a large multivariate analysis had
been done to evaluate the correlations among the data (anthropometric data, subjective and objective postural
comfort). Results showed which could be the most comfortable position of the knob and which body-part
mostly contributed to global perceived comfort
A body-shaped lumbar-sacral support for improving car-seat comfort
No full textNowadays the ergonomic study of the driving position is a critical aspect of the design in the
automotive field. Indeed, due to the rising needs on the market, car industries are focusing even on internal
comfort. The use of the seat could cause some complaints in various regions of our body, especially in the
lumbar-sacral one for prolonged postures. Thus, in order to reduce this kind of complaints, a comfort
evaluation on a special lumbar support for driver seat has been done. Two prototypes of lumbar/sacral support
have been realized: the first one was integrated into the seat and the second one was shaped as a removable
pillow (removable support). Fifty participants were asked to rate the perceived comfort in lab tests performed
on a seating-buck. Three tests, 5 min each, were performed in three different conditions: standard car seat, car
seat with removable support, car seat with integrated support. Both subjective data (by questionnaires) and
objective data (pressure at interface between backrest and driver) have been acquired and processed.
Correlations between subjective and objective data have been calculated by statistical analysis and showed
interesting results about comfort improvement through the adopted solutions
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
