Introduction

Anthropo is the greek word for 'relating to humans', whilst metrics comes for the french word métrique meaning metre, one of the first modern units of measurement. Know that you know that, if you put the two words together and you get anthropometrics. This is the study and science of human measurements.

As time has gone on, this has become particularly important for product design as we have come to realise that humans are not happy, productive people if they are not comfortable. The other big reason for anthropometrics is that humans are continuing to evolve and modern living and lifestyles have continued to change in profound ways. It is important that the design of products keep pace with the science of humans.

Anthropometrics on its own is not sufficient in modern product design. It is important to consider the wider ergonomics or a product as well.

Anthropometric Data

During product design projects, designers and engineers often consult with anthropometric data tables. This is a collection of empirical (measured, not estimated) data which represents the whole spectrum of human sizes. It is important to know whether we as designers are designing for a specific gender, a specific age group, a specific ethnic group (this is not racism, different groups have different genetic characteristics and this is often represented in their physiology (the physical make-up). Additionally there can be sub-groups of people as well such as those who are overweight, those who are underweight, those who are particularly tall and those who are considered comparatively short. For this reason statistical data is collected about averages. Are we catering for the 1st, 5th, 10, 20th, 50th (mean average) or the 95th percentiles?

Up to date data can be difficult to come-by and there are expensive paid-for services and software that will make this information available. For the purposes of an initial starting point, I have embedded a .pdf with data taken from US personnel in 1988. Whilst this data is now considered well out of date it is useful as a 'jumping off point' for estimating key human measurements.