Experiments to Measure the Quality Sensitivity Ergonomics Toward Rail Passengers

A number of researches have taken place in a field of road transportation to increase the value of vehicles which is perceived as a kind of product in automobile industry. Implementing human science was one the efforts to... [ view full abstract ]

A number of researches have taken place in a field of road transportation to increase the value of vehicles which is perceived as a kind of product in automobile industry. Implementing human science was one the efforts to enhance the customer satisfaction. Recently, it has further proceeded to ‘human sensitivity ergonomics’ to appeal emotional attractiveness rather than mere mechanical performance. In railroad field, whereas, such researches were focused on improvement of work efficiency or prevention of human-error found from operators and engineers. Such human-related studies had not been focused much on the public, the end-user. This study introduces the concept of ‘quality of sensitivity ergonomics’ aiming rail passengers. Moreover, it considers various factors that affect the quality through literature reviews. It also covers a hypothesis that such factors are related to the mental stresses of passengers while travelling and thus conducted various experimental methodologies, such as electrocardiography test and surveying method. The results were not statistically significant due to the fact that the experiments were done in trains in real operation; therefore it was difficult to maintain the experiment environment homogeneous, as well as its small sample size; yet results from a particular test showed intuitively explainable tendency. This study found a potential of similar studies that can induce a meaningful outcomes in future.