Read the full-text of this article for free

Title: A decision consequence-based model to understand the phenomena in motorcycle engineering design from a human factor's perspective

Authors: Sean Agius; Philip Farrugia; Emmanuel Francalanza

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Malta, Msida, Malta ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Malta, Msida, Malta ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

Abstract: Research has shown that motorcycle riders' persona and posture have a large impact on motorcycle safety, bringing these challenges into the domain of human factors. Besides these aspects, motorcycle designers must consider the emotional values of such artefacts for it to be successful in the market. Indeed, motorcycle designers must take into account multitude of factors when developing such artefacts. These all pose challenges to designers whilst carrying out motorcycle design. A study was carried out with motorcycle designers to investigate their current design practices, and challenges faced during motorcycle design. A critical literature review revealed that there is a research gap in decision consequence models which do not take a holistic view of the underlying phenomena during design decision-making of motorcycle designers. The gap in literature together with the outcome of the study, collectively led to the development of a decision consequence-based phenomena model during motorcycle design. The model is validated with two case studies from the motorcycle industry through the use of a comparative-validation approach.

Keywords: phenomena model; decision consequences; ergonomics; emotions; design synthesis; human factors; persona.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDE.2021.113268

International Journal of Design Engineering, 2021 Vol.10 No.1, pp.72 - 96

Received: 20 Nov 2020
Accepted: 04 Dec 2020
Published online: 25 Feb 2021 *