Ergonomics is in a way a cousin of Service Design. As the guys who wrote the article about Ergonomics in Wikipedia say:
“Ergonomics is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the (engineering and) design of products, processes, and systems. The goal of human factors is to reduce human error, increase productivity, and enhance safety and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between the human and the thing of interest.”
In a way, we can say that ergonomics is more interested in the interaction between humans and objects, and Service Design is more interested in the interaction between humans and intangible elements like services and other human interactions. So, both fields try to make the world that humans interact with less messy and horrible for humans.
The same Wikipedia article refers to a paper by Nicolas Marmaras, George Poulakakis, and Vasilis Papakostopoulos. The title of their article says it all: “Ergonomic Design in Ancient Greece”. The first sentence of the paper’s abstract makes it pretty clear: “Although the science of ergonomics did not actually emerge until the 20th century, there is evidence to suggest that ergonomic principles were in fact known and adhered to 25 centuries ago”.
It seems that there is pretty good evidence to show that ergonomic principles were used in the 5th century BC. Hippocrates might be considered to be one of the first ergonomics experts, or even a Service Design cousin. He tried to make the workplace of surgeons a better and more efficient place by describing how the tools they use should be arranged.
Egyptians also seem to have understood a great deal about ergonomics as they made tools and other equipment by following its principles. But more on that some other time.
Going further
This article is part of the book "A Tiny History of Service Design, " a tiny two-hour read that goes through the historical events that created what Service Design is today.