I should say, this is one for the really hard-core geek - or design professional. I've long struggled to find a good resource with some figures for basic anthropometric data - average heights of people, grip strengths, etc. I finally stumbled on this a few weeks back: it's a NASA standard for man-machine interfaces, with a handy section of 'Human Capabilites'. Of course, it's strongly biased towards the sort of thing that might come in handy when designing spaceships, but it does have a lot of really useful stuff - plus a lot of random stuff about how bodies react to microgravity (they get bunged up noses, apparently - food should therefore be saltier. Remember that).
As a design tool, it has lots of flaws - essentially, it's based on young, fit American males, so using it to design, say, a playpen for toddlers would be a bit silly. Nonetheless, v interesting - in a dry, NASA-speak sort of way.
4 comments:
FIRST!
(not geeky enough to know what the heck you're talking about, but still impresed by your breadth of knowledge.)
The section on reach and grasp in the anthropemetry section ought to be required reading for Italian car manufacturers, who seem to think their cars are bound to be driven by orang-utans, i.e. short legs and long arms.
Try here. The Human Engineering Data Design Digest looks good, plus many others.
I've tried the usernomics site before, with mixed results. The Human Engineering Design Digest does look good - in fact, I recognize a lot of the tables from the NASA version :) It's kind of reassuring to know that government agencies share data, sometimes.
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