S3 Craft & Design

Anthropometrics

What Is ANTHROPOMETRICS?

Anthropometric data is available on all aspects of human dimensions e.g. height, arm length, hand grip etc.

As people are all different sizes it is necessary to select data which is appropriate to the design situation e.g. Height of a doorway (must consider the height of people).

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Anthropometrics

This graph shows the range of heights for men also the number of men at each of the heights.

Notice few men arevery small and also few men are very tall.

There are a large number who are around the average height.

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Anthropometrics

You may think when choosing the height of a doorway that you would simply choose the size of the tallest man.

This is not the case.The chances of the tallest person using the doorway are so slim that it is not practical to use this size for the door.

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Anthropometrics

In fact when designing the doorway designers ignore the upper 5% and consider the dimensions of the

95th %le

If the design was for small individuals the designer would ignore the smallest 5% and design for the

5th %le

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Anthropometrics

Lets look at another example.

Imagine we were trying to find the maximum height that a shelf should be in a supermarket.

We are looking at an individuals reach here.

The smallest individual we should consider is the

5th %le women (women because it will be smaller than men)if we set the shelf height suitable for the 5th%le women this means that the shelf will be within reach of all individuals.

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Examples of Anthropometrics data

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Examples of Anthropometrics data

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