Designing Small Electronic Products; Is Inclusive Design Possible?

Increasingly the world is full of small, hand held, complex electronic products with modern interfaces e.g. small digital cameras and personal organisers. The control of the operations of the products by embedded systems has removed the necessity to organise the human interface according to the mechanical constraints. Another consequence of the size of the products and the control systems is that there is much greater likelihood of dynamic concurrent use of the hands in any given task. The scope for inclusive design (and inclusive design errors) is infinite.Using a product based Hierarchical Task Analysis and reviewing the available ergonomics data revealed only inadequate tools and large data gaps in ergonomics information.A method of task analysis is being developed, and a series of investigations are planned, to attempt to fill some of the data gaps and discover more about the ways in which people use their hands. This will allow the potential for inclusive design for small electronic products to be ex...