A balanced design bridges the barriers between the user, the task objectives and the environment, within the design itself and without. Such a design creates a connection between these elements rather than constructing artificial barriers that act as gates or walls between them.
This study begins by laying a groundwork with concerns and matters of design. These concerns must be addressed and incorporated into any design, and so, must be the foundation for any means or tools to analyze or evaluate design. But until now there has been no tool or scheme that evaluates the appropriateness of designs for their users, task objectives, and environments. In order to solve this problem, with reference to prior studies from other fields related to design and by incorporating research made in the psychology of perception, this thesis seeks to develop methods to aid in understanding and gauging designs. Using design semantics, perception, and ergonomics these methods may help in creating tools for analyzing and evaluating tight workspaces as the focus of this thesis.
Application of the developed tools within this study illustrates the relationships between user, task, and space, and in doing so, designs become more tangible, comprehensible, and easier to communicate. The emphasis of this work lies in examining non-physical factors influencing the user's workability, in order to enhance principles of design semantics by developing a natural approach to designing objects and spaces, thereby creating a balanced design.