Research On Comfort Design And Evaluation Method Of Ear-worn Products

With the development of Internet of Things(IoT),wearable computing,sensors,and other technologies have become an important vehicle for acquiring human information and sensing the external environment,as well as an important development directions for intelligent wearable products.With the significant increase of users’interactive behavior,usage time and frequency during the process of wearing earwear products,the user’s demand for the comfort of earwear products is becoming more and more prominent.However,the research on the comfort of smart earwear products at home and abroad focuses on the experience of single physical contact and sound size between the product and the ear.There is no comprehensive and multidimensional comfort design and evaluation method for smart earwear products with rich sensing functions and interaction technology.Therefore,exploring the perception law and influencing factors of headphone comfort and constructing user-centered comfort evaluation model and design method will help designers to understand the key design features of headphone products more thoroughly and provide theoretical methods and practical application support for related design activities.In order to construct a scientific and rational product design and evaluation method,based on product design elements,comfort related concepts and models,and user research,we establish a comfortable product evaluation model,including five evaluation dimensions and 17 evaluation indexes,including product function,interaction characteristics,emotional impression,physical attributes,acoustic attributes.Based on context aware theory and comfort perception dimension,the key design features that affect the comfort of earwear products are determined from the product design perspective,and the priority of key design features is determined by establishing a matching matrix related to comfort evaluation index.According to the design characteristics of the earwear products with high priority,a design method of the key components of the earwear products driven by the shape of the head and ears is presented.The population was divided by statistical analysis of characteristic measurement,obtains six types of representative Chinese head-ear reference models.Then the relationship between the shape of head and ear and the key components of headphone shape is discussed,assisting the size design of key components of ear wear products and makes the prototype.Taking the headset prototype as an example,the subjective and objective evaluation experiment of wearable comfort were carried out,the correlation between objective measurement parameters and subjective evaluation was studied,and a regression prediction model was established,and the feasibility verification experiment of the prediction model was carried out through five marketed headphones.Finally,based on the data and reference model of the Chinese people,and combining the subjective and objective evaluation method and evaluation result of headset comfort,a headphone auxiliary design and evaluation system is developed for the designers and applied to the earwear products design practice.The main innovations of this paper are as follows:In the aspect of design theory,this paper from the angle of theoretical analysis and experimental research,with the subject of ergonomic comfort,set up a comprehensive earwear product comfort evaluation model,from five dimensions of product function,interaction characteristics,emotional impression,physical properties and acoustic properties to evaluate the impact of earwear products on people’s comfort.The matching relationship and correlation between the comfort evaluation model and the key design features of earwear products are established,the key design features affecting comfort are selected,and the design method of the key components of earwear products driven by the shape and size of head and ear is proposed.Based on anthropometric theory,head and ear feature points and feature measurements are defined,feature measurement method suitable for earmuffs,head-ear crowd classification method based on principal component clustering algorithm and head-ear reference model fitting method are proposed.According to the influence of comfort evaluation index and human comfort perception dimension,a method of wear product comfort evaluation is established,and the correlation between objective physiological perception measurement parameters and subjective perception is studied.Finally,the regression prediction model of pressure perception,stability perception and heat and humidity perception of wear products are established.In the aspect of design and application,based on the Chinese three-dimensional head and ear measurement data and representative reference model,combined with subjective and objective evaluation methods and prediction models of the comfort of ear-worn products,an offline experimental test platform and an online earphone design and evaluation system are built in this paper,which can more comprehensively solve the problems related to the complex comfort experience of ear-worn products and provide more intuitive design guidance.The platform can quickly obtain objective measurement parameters of different headphones’ comfort and obtain more accurate and scientific measurement results.During the product design stage,the headset design and evaluation system can help designers to quickly standardize the size design of key components of earwear products,simplify the design process and improve efficiency.At the design evaluation stage,the overall comfort level is evaluated based on the measurement parameters and subjective evaluation data of existing competing headphones or product prototypes,and corresponding modification suggestions are proposed to improve the design and development process of the entire earwear products,and to promote the efficient iterative updating and optimization of the products.