3D Printed Hands-Free Door Handle to Prevent COVID-19 Virus Spread: Developing a Design Based on Iranian population for Medical Centers

Abstract

Hands-free door handles are considered one of the new design approaches to reduce the amount of hand contact with doorknobs, which will reduce bacterial or viral transmission through hands and doorknobs. We designed a hands-free ergonomic door handle (HFEDH) using the Iranian anthropometric dimension of the forearm and its circumference to be placed on existing Iranian hospital door handles. To perceive the effectiveness of the designed HFEDH, a questionnaire containing 10 statements from the System Usability Scale (SUS) was distributed among 245 participants who participated in the experiment, as a survey scale for evaluating the final product usability. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed that the use of HFEDH elicits a statistically significant change in usability score (Z=-13.202, p<0.0005) when compared to the use of a typical door handle (DH). Conclusions: The suggested hands-free door handle was designed so that it can accommodate the 5th to 95th percentiles of forearm circumference anthropometric dimensions. The current hands-free door handle is an affordable solution for hospitals to prevent the spread of any virus and bacteria during the pandemic.

Keywords: Human-centered design, 3D printer, non-standard hands-free door handle, Ergonomics

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005163