Abstract
The designing of the hardware in medical and social care requires versatility applicable to all conditions consisting of combinations of various patient （or user） populations and various use situations. However, with conventional techniques, it is not clear how to respond to such requirements. Harmonious designing has been proposed as a technique to determine design specifications based on agreements among concerned parties by means of various trade-off adjustments through discussion using mathematical models. Harmonious designing appears to be applicable as a scientific technique for designing versatile hardware. However, to date, no such application has been attempted. The present study was conducted aiming at identifying the potential of harmonious designing and matters of concern, by its actual application to designing the hardware in medical and social care. The results have suggested that it is possible to design the hardware by adjusting the trade-off between the conditions consisting of combinations of various user populations and various use situations, that it is possible to visualize the trade-off between the conditions and the limit values of the characteristics of the target design, and that, at the time of the experiment, it is necessary to accumulate valid data, not affected by skills and fatigue.
