AN ERGONOMIC INVESTIGATION OF WORKING ENVIRONMENT WITH KANO MODEL AND UNIVERSAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Abstract

Quality of work environment in terms of adequacy of the conditions of working offices is becoming more important each passing day for companies. It is revealed that ergonomically suitable working environment makes employee motivation increase, and that precisely has a positive effect on both human health and company interests. Kano model is a powerful tool used in the determination of design requirements for the classification of the users’ degree of satisfaction, but even for this tool, a common language of phrase is needed to show what extends has to be achieved to provide these customer needs independently from individual point of views. Universal Design Principles (UDP) is a tool to evaluate products, services and the environment to make them used by everyone without needing additional design and regardless of age and skills. In this study, we propose some suggestions about ergonomic design of work environment to eliminate the factors that prevent unhealthy, inefficient and unsafe work conditions via the employment of a common language in terms of occupants’ requests. We used Kano model and UDP tools and propose an integrated approach to offer an enhanced working environment. Proposed approach is validated with a real-world application, where questionnaires were prepared based on ergonomic conditions and UDP, and then the approach was evaluated with Kano Model for a large-scale public institution.

Keywords

• Ergonomic design,Universal design principles,Kano model,working environment analysis,Employee motivation,Enhancement

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