A Comparison of the Roles of Univariate and Three-Dimensional Anthropometric Data in the Description of Form

Abstract

With the recent completion of the Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource (CAESAR), a comprehensive set of univariate and three-dimensional anthropometric data has been made available to the design community. It is now the role of the designers to determine how best to utilize these data, whether to continue designing with distance measures or to break with the traditional methods and explore the descriptive possibilities of 3D data. This paper describes a statistical comparison of the characteristics of traditional, univariate anthropometric data to three-dimensional data in the design of a seated workstation through the exploration of (1) the ability of distance data extracted from 3D landmark data to represent traditional anthropometric dimensions and (2) the degree of similarity between the design information provided by extracted distance data and the original set of three-dimensional landmark coordinates. The results suggest that three-dimensional landmarks provide a more complete archival of form than do univariate descriptors.