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Industries strive to minimize their development costs, to shorten the time required for development and to increase the quality of the product. The paper summarizes three ergonomic evaluation methods developed for the automotive industry. The first method presents a manikin with a movement pattern similar to people. The second method is a tool to evaluate comfort that can be combined with a manikin. The third and last, is a methodology for eliciting user comments. Ergonomic evaluation methods and tests with a computer support and generate information that may lead to reduced product development cost. These kinds of tools are also suitably used in cross-functional project groups in order to visualize alternative designs, and evaluations in a participative process. Visualization of traffic, driver and eye-movements seems to open up the discussion and is a step to a more user-centered design process.

The objective of this paper is to investigate whether different appearance modes of the digital human models (DHM or manikins) affect the observers when judging a working posture. A case where the manikin is manually assembling a battery in the boot with help of a lifting device is used in the experiment. 16 different pictures were created and presented for the subjects. All pictures have the same background, but include a unique posture and manikin appearance combination. Four postures and four manikin appearances were used. The subjects were asked to rank the pictures after ergonomic assessment based on posture of the manikin. Subjects taking part in the study were either manufacturing engineering managers, simulation engineers or ergonomists. Results show that the different appearance modes affect the ergonomic judgment. A more realistic looking manikin is rated higher than the very same posture visualized with a less natural appearance.