Research On The Usability Factor Framework Of Stair- Climbing Wheelchair

With the improvement of living standards and technological development,the special groups, such as those physically disabled and the elderly, have the increasingly strong demand for freedom of action. Therefore, high-tech products like the stair-climbing wheelchairs have gained more and more attention. Nowadays a few stair-climbing wheelchairs have been promoted to the market. However, these products only focus on the technology research, and there is a lack of the discussion on their availability to the users. But as a matter of fact, modern users are no longer satisfied with the feasibility of the products, instead ,they are more concerned about user convenience of the products. So the products with high availability promote the consumers'buying intentions and improve product competitiveness.The existing availability theory is mainly used in software, and it's not appropriate to directly use the theory into physical products such as stair-climbing wheelchair.This study aims at exploring the possibility of applying Ergonomics into usability research on the stair-climbing wheelchair for the elderly, and propose the usability factor framework for usability design of stair-climbing wheelchairs for the elderly.The study involves the following five steps: (1) Analyze the problems in the existing usability factor frameworks, generalize the relationship between the stair-climbing wheelchair and users, and discuss the core usability indicators of the stair-climbing wheelchair in the light of Ergonomics. (2) Summarize the secondary usability factors of the stair-climbing wheelchair through interviews with the elderly and questionnaires on the characteristics of the elderly. (3) Integrate the core usability indicators and the secondary usability factors through the experts'assessment, build the usability factor framework of stair-climbing wheelchairs and elaborate on it from usefulness, safety, reliability, convenience and comfort of the product. (4) Design a stair-climbing wheelchair, in accordance with the key points. (5) Make a prototype, perform operation experiments, and make statistic analysis of ten testers.The result shows that this stair-climbing wheelchair is of high availability for its high function needs, good interface operation and comfort. Meanwhile, the result also suggests the significance of building the usability factor framework of stair-climbing wheelchair, and can serve as good reference for the future design research and development of similar intelligent products.