Usability Heuristics for Costume Design and Quality Ergonomics in the Entertainment Industry

The entertainment business continues to push the limits for human performance and technologies by augmenting performances with costume technologies. A major challenge in the design and applications of costumes is the lack of ergonomic standards to ensure successful performance while minimizing injuries. This paper will present an application of Nielsen’s usability heuristics to create heuristics for costume design with the usability principles for user interface design reimagined and applied to costume design. Fourteen usability heuristics make up the framework for the Costume-Apparatus Usability Heuristics (CAUH), with two strategies for applying the CAUH. One strategy evaluates the usability of each costume element separately, which is useful because the costume-apparatus elements are frequently designed and produced by different people. The second strategy is a more holistic evaluation of the configuration of costume elements and their impact across the full lifecycle of the performance. The implications for the adoption of the CAUH within the entertainment industries can produce multiple benefits, from reducing injuries to enabling visionary performances.