A study of desk and chair design for elementary school children

• Main Authors: Chung-Chia Chiu, 邱從甲
• Other Authors: Chiuhsiang Joe Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/34334180370777345535

碩士 === 中原大學 === 工業工程研究所 === 95 === The school furniture in Elementary School should be designed based on the figures of students. Any improper design will cause bad sitting posture, backache, near sight, or even problems in bone growth. In 1997, Ministry of Education announced new types of school furniture for Junior School and Elementary School, and started to renew the school furniture stepwise in the following year. However, this good intention was criticized by some school teachers, students as well as their parents. They think the new design was unpractical. This study has collected comments from the school teachers regarding the new design of school furniture and discovered that the reduced drawer size is their main concern. Comparing the school furniture specification recommended by Chang Liang-Wei in 2000 and that recommended by researchers of the international human factor engineering as well as the anthropometry data measured, it is noted that chair depth is often inadequate, which consequently will lead to backache. In addition, this study adopts Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to investigate the elements which experts or students think are the most important in designing school furniture. These elements in order of importance include the appropriate distance between eyes and the desk surface, the sufficient leg-movement space below the desk, and the space for keeping the school supplies, etc. Finally, based on the result of AHP as well as the drawbacks of the current school furniture design, the designing formula and recommended values for school furniture were proposed. Depending on the requirement, the formula will use constant, average, or extreme values to perform the design. The new design not only has met the required specification but also eliminated the original drawbacks after verified by the anthropometry data measured. Moreover, the school furniture specification for Elementary School has been reduced from 13 types to 6 types. The outcome of this study certainly will serve as good references for the future design of school furniture.