Ergonomics Design Research on Writing Tools for Children

Abstract Design of writing tools for children should well consider ergonomics factors. However, design guides provided should leave designers freedom to handle design without strict limitation. This paper described a study in 2014 with Chinese children aged from 3 to 10, in order to find out key factors in design features which have large influence on hand grasp development. The study is highly application oriented. Methods like observation, questionnaire, and experiment are applied to achieve the study objective. Two key factors in design, i.e. clear positioning of grasp point and balanced distribution of grasp forces among fingers, are found to have high relevance to children's grasp development. More specific design guides are formulated, and initial design concepts based on these guides are proposed and presented in the paper.

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