Abstract
It has been reported that one-fifth of people in Taiwan have insomnia problems. Many studies also pointed out the importance of sleep, and how sleep quality affected the quality of life. The characteristics of mattresses tend to affect the quality of sleep. Thus, providing a comfortable mattress is a very important issue. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the new mattresses design based on ergonomics considerations.The study was divided into two experiments. In experiment I, we evaluated four mattress toppers with different surface design and different material combinations with 32 subjects. Physiological measures included body pressure distribution, body temperature distribution and microclimate. Subjective ratings were also collected. In experiment II, we evaluated the mattresses with six new designs. The data collected were the same as experiment I.The results showed that the pressure distribution of mattresses without surface design was lower than others. The body temperature was found to be lower with surface design, due to the material features. The results in microclimate temperature were the same as the body temperature. The mattress with lower microclimate temperature had higher microclimate humidity. For the subjective questionnaire, there was no significant difference in experiment I. The mattress with surface and stacked design had the best subjective feeling in experiment II.This study can provide useful information for mattress toppers design and selection.