Abstract
The profile of a bus seat needs to be designed ergonomically for better seating comfort. The present study is intended to develop an ergonomic bus seat design protocol based on seat comfort evaluation and seat profile analysis. The proposed seat profile design protocol consists of five steps: (1) seating comfort evaluation, (2) seat profile measurement, (3) preferred design feature identification, (4) new seat profile design development, and (5) new seat profile design validation. In the comfort evaluation step, 48 participants evaluated 7 parts (headrest, upper-back support, lumbar support, seatback bolster, hip support, thigh support, and seatpan bolster) of 12 existing bus seats from various ergonomic aspects including fitness of shape and overall comfort. In the profile measurement step, the profiles of seatback and seatpan for the bus seats were scanned and analyzed. In the preferred design identification step, preferred design features of the bus seats were identified based on the comfort evaluation results. In the design development step, the identified preferred design features were applied to developing the prototype of an improved bus seat. Lastly, in the validation step, the new bus seat was compared with the reference bus seat by seating comfort evaluation. The proposed bus seat seat (M = 4.79, SD = 1.22) was found superior to the reference bus seat (M = 4.32, SD = 1.16) at the seatback and seatpan parts. The proposed seat profile design protocol would be applicable to design various types of seats used in bus as well as passenger cars.