ABSTRACT
This chapter will introduce the essential factors that should be considered in the design and evaluation of workspaces, including individual, physical, psychosocial, and environmental factors. It will cover proactive design philosophies that include worker accommodation and overall worker health, including prevention of both cumulative and acute injuries and return to work. Finally, a few future trends will be addressed, including the need to design workspaces for workers' entire working life and approaches to design that support return to work of injured workers. The chapter as a whole will provide an overview of essential knowledge and literature on the topic of workspace design while helping the reader look forward to the future of workspace design in the context of human factors and ergonomics.
