Workplace Design¶

Status: emerging
Last updated: 2026-05-31
Sources: 9781119636113.Ch14.Pdf
Tags: [workplace-design, working-postures, anthropometry, physical-ergonomics, user-centered-design, workstation-design]

Summary¶

Workplace design concerns the shape, dimensions, and layout of the material elements surrounding one or more working persons, including seats, work surfaces, equipment, controls, displays, and the environment (Marmaras & Nathanael, 2021). Its aims are to improve work performance in quantity and quality while ensuring occupational safety, health, and well-being by minimising physical workload, facilitating task execution, and achieving ease of use. The chapter is methodological, presenting a phased design process and arguing that placing work activities at the centre makes ergonomic design synonymous with user-centred design.

Body¶

Context¶

Marmaras and Nathanael (2021), in their handbook chapter on workplace design, examine the shape, dimensions, and layout of the material elements surrounding one or more working persons — seats, work surfaces, equipment, controls, displays, and the environment. The chapter is methodological, presenting a phased design process and arguing that placing work activities at the centre makes ergonomic design synonymous with user-centred design. Within this knowledge base the article is the physical-ergonomics counterpart to the body-measurement work in 3D Anthropometry and Digital Human Modeling, which supply the data and tools its prototyping phases use; it shares the work-system framing of Job And Team Design and treats workplace design as an instance of the user-centred logic developed in Usability And User Experience.

Key Points¶

Workplace design addresses the physical configuration of work — from seats and desks to controls, displays, passages, windows, and heating equipment. The ergonomic goals are to improve work performance and ensure occupational safety, health, and well-being by minimising physical workload and associated strain, facilitating information exchange and the alleviation of physical constraints, and achieving ease of use of workplace elements (PDF p. 1, orig. p. 368).

A systemic view is required because elements interact. Marmaras and Nathanael illustrate this with a worker who bends sideways into an awkward posture to avoid screen glare from a window behind them, where an environmental characteristic and a task demand combine to affect posture, physical workload, health, and performance. The workplace leaves the worker many degrees of freedom, and habitual postures emerge from exploring its constraints and affordances, so designers must consider the working person, the task, and the environment together (PDF pp. 1–2, orig. pp. 368–369).

The chapter centres work activities, which is what makes ergonomic design synonymous with user-centred design — positioning workplace design not as the imposition of fixed standards but as a process responsive to how people actually carry out their work (PDF p. 2, orig. p. 369).

A phased design method runs through high-level requirements and resource decisions, specific design goals, prototyping, prototype assessment, improvements, and final design (PDF pp. 5–8, orig. pp. 372–375). On working postures, the chapter stresses that no single best posture can be held for long periods, so effort should go into designing for postural variation rather than prescribing one ideal position, with seat design and work-surface height as central problems (PDF pp. 2–4, orig. pp. 369–371).

Conclusion¶

Marmaras and Nathanael (2021) conclude that workplace design is properly understood as user-centred design: by placing actual work activities at the centre and treating the person, task, and environment as an interacting system, designers should support postural variation and ease of use rather than impose fixed standards or a single ideal posture.

References¶

Marmaras, N. & Nathanael, D. (2021) 'Workplace Design', in Salvendy, G. & Karwowski, W. (eds.) Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics. 5th edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. marmaras2021workplacedesign

Open Questions¶

How should workplace design accommodate postural variation rather than a single prescribed posture over long work periods?
How do digital human modelling tools change the prototyping and assessment phases of the workplace design process?