IE Concepts research paper summary

Research Paper Summary on

Investigating Ergonomics Awareness Among

University Students

By Juliana Hamka Kamaroddin, Maslina Abdul Aziz, and Azman Ariffin

2010 International Conference on User Science Engineering (i-USEr)

Presented By:

Saket Wankhede

PGDIE 42

Roll NO. 84

1.      INTRODUCTION

            Computers have become a common tool for information system in supporting user’s personal and productivity system as they would increase user’s productivity. Heavy computer users have potential of getting ergonomics illnesses. In ergonomics can be defined as a study of human factors related to things people use and it concerns with fitting the job to the worker. Ergonomics are often defined as the practice of designing the job to fit the worker, not forcing the worker to fit the job.

            Several studies have shown that when working at a computer, one’s posture tends to become more restrained and lead to eye pains. Therefore, there is a need to have better device equipment in order to use computers with less strain on the body and designing good ergonomically computer environment.

2.      LITERATURE

2.1  Definition of Ergonomics

"Ergon" means work and "nomos" means natural law. In other words, it literally means "how to work according to nature" - as opposed to fighting against what is naturally best for us. Ergonomics is concerned with developing knowledge about human capabilities, limitations, and other characteristics as they relate to the design of the interfaces between humans and other system components. Ergonomics examines the physical capabilities of the human body and the limitation of the human body in relation to a person’s work tasks, the tools used and the job environment.

2.2  Importance of Ergonomics to Health

Applying ergonomics in working environment is believed can reduce the risk of mental health which refers to stress, fatigue, anger, depression, unsatisfactory work and others. The application of ergonomics will give major influence to one’s mental health in giving them satisfaction in work, increase performance, safety and health.

2.3  Ergonomics of Computer

Unhealthy postures leads to discomfort and injury. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is perhaps the most frequently mentioned type of injury. An afflicted patient may experience tingling, numbness and pain in the thumb, index and middle fingers. If left untreated, the carpal tunnel syndrome may render the hand practically useless.

            A study was done on user experiences in using computer. Findings shows that prolonged use of computers may impact health risk especially body postures. By using ergonomic equipment and furniture may able to reduce the risk of injury.

3.      METHOD USED FOR STUDY

3.1  Participants

The respondents of the study conducted consisted of 60 students from different programs from the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics of Universiti Teknologi MARA. They were selected through convenience sampling. They were given a set of questionnaire to answer.

3.2  Instruments

A self-administered questionnaire was designed in three sections. Section I contains demographic items such as respondent’s age, gender, program and average hours of computer usage. Section II covers five ergonomics factors such as (i) chair, (ii) keyboard and mouse, (iii) monitor, (iv) desk and (v) ergonomics health risk factor. Section III consists of Likert scale questions (1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree) concerns on respondents’ perception regarding the five ergonomics factors identified in Section II. The following are five determinants which are mapped to 16 survey items:

·         Chair: ‘position of feet on floor’ (Item 1), ‘chair to support thighs’ (Item 2), ‘chair to support lower back’ (Item 3), ‘adjustable chair’s height’ (Item 4) and ‘chair’s ability to rotate’ (Item 5).

·         Keyboard and Mouse: ‘position of mouse and keyboard’ (Item 6), ‘wrist in neutral position’ (Item 7), ‘keyboard resting heights with elbows’ (Item 8) and ‘arrangement of keys on the keyboard’ (Item 9).

·         Monitor: ‘distance of monitor’ (Item 10), ‘comfortable distance with level of eyes’ (Item 11), ‘level of eyes with the top of the monitor’ (Item 12) and ‘eyes at comfortable distance from monitor’ (Item 13).

·         Desk: ‘rooms to stretch out legs under desk’ (Item 14) and ‘enough space on desk’ (Item 15).

·         Ergonomics Health Risks Factor: ‘risks in using computer for long period’ (Item16).

The questionnaire was checked for content validity. The Cronbach’s Alpha value for the Likert scale questions is 0.911.

4.      ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

4.1  User Awareness on Ergonomics

The students use computer for quite long hours per day. 28.3% of them use computer for average hours of more than 8 hours, 28.3% of them also use it for 5-6 hours, 21.7% of them use it for 7-8 hours, 15% of them use it for 3-4 hours and 6.7% of them use it for 1-2 hours per day.

Table 1 Demographic Profile

4.2  User Experience on Ergonomics

The following paragraphs discuss finding on students’ experiences when using the equipments and devices associated with computers.

·         Chair: The chair that they use mostly supports their thighs and lower back, but is not that practical because its height is not adjustable and also without ability to rotate.

·         Keyboard and Mouse: Keyboard and mouse as frequent used devices should be reached easily. Most of the students have good arrangement of keyboard and mouse.

·         Monitor: About 65% of the students find themselves leaning towards monitor when working. 63.3% of them get glare reflected in their monitor at any time of the day, either from windows, lights or the sun. These findings show that the students do not find that lighting and glare is a big issue.

·         Desk: 50% of the students claim that there is plenty of room to stretch out legs under their desk. Only 46.7% of them said that they have enough space on their desk to lay out computer equipments. These two findings show that the student could not care less to buy ergonomic designed desk. This is probably the fact that the desk provided in their college is not meant to be a computer desk, but a working desk.

·         Ergonomics Health Risk Factor: All the symptoms that the students experience are due to long hour usage of computers. Using improper design of computer peripherals and accessories that do not follow the ergonomics criteria does increase the chances of experiencing these symptoms.

4.3  User Perception on Ergonomics

Table 2 describes the frequency of student perception on ergonomics by survey item. Students spend long hours sitting on chair while using computers doing homework and assignment. Finding for chair shows that only 60% of the students agree that a good chair should be designed with ability to rotate (item 5). This is good for user to turn around when sitting on the chair. Most of the students (with 86.7%) agree that it is important to use chair that supports lower back (item 3). This is contradicting with the finding of students’ experience on using chair where only 55% of them use chair that support their lower back.

Quite high percentage of them (with 78.3%) agrees that arrangement of keys in keyboard design is important (item 9). For monitor, 86.6% of the students agree that distance of monitor (item 10) is important. It goes the same for item 13 (eyes at comfortable distance from monitor), with percentage of 85%. Only 45% of them agree that level of eyes must always be at the top of monitor. These findings are significant with what they experience as in the previous sections being discussed that 75% of them claim that their eyes are at a comfortable distance of 1.5-2 feet from monitor but only 56.7% of them said that their eyes level with the top of monitor.

78.4% of the students agree that it is important to have an enough space on desk to lay out computer equipments (item 15). Plenty room to stretch out legs under desk (item 14) is also important with 70% of them agree on this matter. These findings contradict with the students’ experience as being discussed earlier in.

 Most of the students, with 86.6% agree that the chances of computer users are easily influenced by ergonomics health risk factor after using computer for long hours (item 16) is true. Their experience show that 83.3% of the students feel pain, tingling, coldness, numbness, stiffness or burning in fingers, hands, wrists or arms when using computer for long period of time. 86.7% of them also get pain in upper back, shoulders or neck.

Table 2 Frequency of student perception on five ergonomics factors

5.      CONCLUSION

This study investigated the ergonomics awareness among university students. Result shows that there is a significant association between attending HCI course and having knowledge in ergonomics. Although these students know and understand the good principle of ergonomics, the results reveal that only half of them practice it. Results also reveal that they experienced physical discomfort attributed to long computer use such as wrist pain and back pain. In terms of ergonomic awareness, the students are least concern on ergonomic risk of keyboard and mouse. Findings from this study provide empirical evidence on the current state of practice among university students in computer usage environment from the perspective of ergonomics. This finding indicates the need to educate students with ergonomic awareness.