Given the 140(!) sessions that took place at the 2007 IDSA national conference this year in San Francisco, there's no shame in missing a few sessions. Of course the topics that you really want to see all occur simultaneously, leaving one with a "paradox of choices".
I was most impressed by Roger Ball's Size China: A New World of Ergonomics. Roger is a designer by training and professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic. For the last 18 months, he has been building a database of anthropometric data by digitally scanning over 2,000 Chinese citizens. The project was inspired by the lack of a comprehensive anthropometric database of Asian head and facial features, comparable to what is available for Caucasian populations. For example, most helmets used in China were designed against Caucasian measurements and are ill-fitting due to significant differences in head shape between Asians and Caucasians(see image).
Roger said that his data will be made available for free to academic endeavors by contacting him directly.
Learn more about the project at: http://www.sizechina.com/html/index.html
I was intrigued by this project and interested in potential differences in perceived and reported fit among populations, not due to head size, but due to potential cultural and linguistic variances in what is considered comfortable and fitting. Perhaps some of the presenations on measuring emotion would have helped me address those issues, but like I said, I couldn't make all of the presentations.
