Design for Humans

Every product is used by a body with a particular reach, grip strength and field of view, and by a person who brings expectations the designer never gets to meet. This unit starts with the measurable side of that: anthropometric data, which is the recorded range of human body sizes, and the ergonomic principles built on top of it. It then moves to the research methods that reveal how a product is actually used rather than how it was intended to be used.

The rest of the unit asks what the designer owes those people. Inclusive design treats the full range of human ability as the ordinary case rather than a special allowance, and the responsibility topics cover safety, standardisation, and the deliberate choices a designer makes about how long a product should last. C1.3 goes past accessibility and usability to the reasons a product can be well made, perfectly usable, and still fail the people it was built for.