Comfort and discomfort during smartphone use on a bed

BACKGROUND: The number of smartphone users is immense. People can do ever more with a smartphone. Smartphones are used everywhere, including in bed and on the sofa. The awkward postures taken in these situations affect comfort and discomfort. In designing a bed, it might be useful to know which position is comfortable for smartphone use on a...

Effect of scent on comfort of aircraft passengers

BACKGROUND: Scents may influence the perceived comfort of an environment. There are only a few studies conducted on the relationship between scent and comfort in aircraft cabin. OBJECTIVES: The goal of this research is to explore whether relationships between scents and perceived comfort can be found for passengers in an aircraft cabin....

PCQ: Preferred Comfort Questionnaires for product design

BACKGROUND: Selecting the most suitable questionnaire(s) in comfort research for product design is always a challenge, even for experienced researchers. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this research is to create a list of Preferred Comfort Questionnaires (PCQ) for product design to help researchers in the selection of questionnaires for comfort...

Differences and similarities in comfort and discomfort experience in nine countries in Asia, the Americas and Europe

In order to investigate differences in comfort and discomfort experiences amongst different regions of the world (America, Asia and Europe), a cross cultural study was performed. A questionnaire was sent to participants out in nine countries (Brazil, Canada, the USA, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands). In total...

Investigating car passenger well-being related to a seat imposing continuous posture variation

Static sitting when travelling by car is known to cause physical fatigue. It is generally encouraged to periodically engage in non-sedentary activities, but this is not possible when traveling by car. The present study aims to investigate the influence of moving the vehicle occupant’s body passively. This posture variation is realized by...

Patterns of Discomfort

A review of literature on comfort and discomfort indicates an increase in physical discomfort during the workday. In this paper, three different types of occupations were studied to identify whether a similar discomfort pattern exists in these occupations while participants perform work throughout the work day and workweek. Results are that...

Improving car passengers' comfort and experience by supporting the use of handheld devices

BACKGROUND: There is a demand for interiors to support other activities in a car than controlling the vehicle. Currently, this is the case for the car passengers and – in the future – autonomous driving cars will also facilitate drivers to perform other activities. One of these activities is working with handheld devices. OBJECTIVE: Previous...