Ergonomic design of classroom furniture for High School students of Bangladesh

Ensuring the facilitation students comfortable learning activities depends on couple of underlying factors and appropriate school furniture is one of the key factors. Idiosyncratically, the management of these schools could hardly pay attentions on this and have needful measure in practice due to couple of constrains like financial, technical capacities etc. As, students spend their 80% of school time on sitting position, it is very likely to ensure the supply of appropriate furniture for them, because long time sitting on inappropriate furniture jeopardizes developing back pain, neck pain, postural dysfunction and other musculoskeletal disorder etc. This bad habit acquired at the student stage may impact in the long run in the subsequent life stages. Therefore, this research identifies the notable mismatch between classroom furniture dimensions and anthropometric characteristics investigating on 300 Bangladeshi secondary school students (150 boys, 150 girls), aged 11-15 at where fifteen anthropometric measurements and eight dimensions from existing classroom furniture are measured by using standard measuring instrument and determines the mismatch between them. In this research mismatching between body dimensions of the students and existing classroom furniture dimension of attributions with seat depth 97.99%, seat width 78%, seat height 75.52% and desk height 69.33% respectively is being observed closely and the higher level of mismatching is found. Based on the demand to accommodate appropriate classroom furniture for at least 80% students of secondary school of Bangladesh, this paper proposes a methodology and guideline for designing ergonomic oriented classroom furniture having dimensions for seat height (42cm-46cm), seat depth (36cm-38cm), seat width (30cm-35cm) and desk height (22cm27cm). This study could be used to design suitable classroom furniture which would not only ensure adjustability but also enhance the level of comfort for the aimed users. Keywords— Ergonomic design, anthropometric measurements, Economic, Optimum