Hälsa och Säkerhet - Reducera tunga lyft av tvättsäckar för lokalvårdare på Östra Sjukhuset

Abstract

This bachelor thesis explores how user-centered design with focus on ergonomics can contribute to a safer handling of lifting heavy laundry bags for environmental service workers in their daily work. The aim of the project is to reduce the risk of injury when lifting laundry bags into a laundry cart for environmental service workers at Östra Sjukhuset during clearance of laundry from the healthcare personnel’s locker rooms. The project has been executed through an iterative design process with interviews, ideation, sketches, concept development, prototyping and user tests. Initially, information gathering and analysis of the current conditions were carried out to identify the target group's needs. From the result of these, the process continued further until ideation and concept development where a number of concepts were produced. The concepts were evaluated and refined, then prototypes were built for the three further developed concepts which were presented to the client. The final result was two of the concepts in combination with each other where one concept distributes the weight more equally between laundry bags and the other assists in lifting said laundry bags. The conclusion is that the developed concept fulfills the purpose of the project and that further work in the area is advocated. It is suggested that future evaluations be carried out to complete the concept further with calculations and technical sketches.