Furgonomics

[a_random_fox]

Furgonomics is a portmanteau of furry and ergonomics. It is basically thinking about how things and places need to be adapted to fit different species needs. One example would be having tailholes in pants for species with tails or there being multiples of the same sign at different heights to compensate for species of different size.

My fursona, being relatively close in shape to a human would probably have a relatively easy time, the one major difference the clothing would need is a tailhole and a bike helmet would have to accomodate the ears. The bigger difference comes from their android nature. On the one hand, no need for normal food, on the other, there needs to be charging equipment for their battery and repair materials. Injury/damage would need some different skills than with an organic.

What kinds of adaptions would your fursona need or want?
Do you have any clever solutions for problems some other species might have?

[NovaSquirrel]

I'm a fan of Cervelet's car seat design that even takes taurs into account. In my worldbuilding I've thought about how taurs would interact with different things, and thought about how you would probably want to have big cushions as seating options in places like restaurants in addition to stools and chairs, for quadrupeds.

My sona is a rubber mouse and she has simple mitt paws, and so she might use arcade style controls when playing a video game because a mitt can grip a joystick but not work a d-pad.

[Loosf]

The best part of solatorobo was the concept art with furgonomics, including how do furry toilets work, to accomodate the tails.


That is important.

[DarkOverord]

I have considered this at least with my dragon! Especially as you're working around wings too!

I think what I went for in the end isn't the best and could improve on it, but it was fun

[flaxenPhoenix]

Kasi and Akesi have a very unusual version of this: given that they're two ends of the same snake, and they sleep in shifts (Kasi being diurnal and Akesi being nocturnal), they can't exactly sleep in a bed, since the other one would be unable to move. Instead, they sleep on a pillow that they strapped to a skateboard.

[Ribbon]

My sona is a rubber mouse and she has simple mitt paws, and so she might use arcade style controls when playing a video game because a mitt can grip a joystick but not work a d-pad.

There were a ton of reasons we got into arcade sticks, one very small reason was the idea that it'd be a lot easier to play if we were wearing our fursuit paws for whatever reason. It's still really tough but it's adorable so. :3

As far as our 'sonas, we need to think of a better way to draw Vire and Rachel with their toques on. We usually just do it on top of the head with the ear covering the rest. We've seen people draw the headband part of it going all the way around with the ears poking out which seems really cool and we need to try it. - Finn (fae/she)

[beeps]

When my sona was most recently a (non-robotic) bat, she wore a poncho. Making any other kind of clothing that accommodates wings would not be very easy!

Olive, being plush, also only has 'mitt' type paws. I've joked before that they use chopsticks wrapped in velcro, stuck to their paws, to be able to type on a keyboard.

I used to be kinda into pondering furgonomic stuff but that's fallen off some since I got more interested in aptophilia. My characters are large and weird and don't really fit into the world around them by design.

[Mandrake]

My fursona is literally a horse, so he'd have to use his mouth for basically everything. Maybe he would type using a special keyboard with extra-extra-large keys that he can slam with his hooves, and play video games with an Xbox Adaptive Controller.

The question of how furry ungulates hold objects comes up fairly often, especially in the My Little Pony fandom where most of the characters either use magical telekinesis or have "sticky" hooves which can pick up objects. I seem to recall some furry art which proposed some solutions for this problem, such as using hooks that slot into specially-adapted horse shoes, but this was many years ago on Twitter and I'm no longer able to track it down (if anyone reading this knows what I'm talking about, please share a link here!)

[moss]

i generally imagine that clothes in the furry universe comes with a lot of size options, but also are designed to be very adjustable to fit the most body types possible. i also imagine it'd be very common to modify your own clothes, tailors are probably much more common, and many furs would just learn how to mod clothes themselves. i've also heard ideas about magical clothes that conform to the body shape of the wearer (generally for tf contexts :3) & i find that concept intriguing too

[LeinaWahMom]

I always enjoyed how Beastars handled "furgonomics". If you read the ancillary material, there's a bunch of fun tidbits, like how the inhabitants cut open their own tail-holes in clothing rather than there being standardised sizes. Even in the main story there's some great moments, like an entire facility set up to let animals indulge the instincts that would otherwise embarrass them, such as marsupials missing their mother's pouch, a feline's need to scratch stuff or a canine's wish to indulge in ball-fetching.

[lilySeafoam]

Ooh, furgonomics is such a fun theme to think about, doubly so when worldbuilding. At least for me/my sona, the biggest things that would need to be worked around is the height/size difference, what with things like doors and furniture, as well as navigating crowds and transit. Another thing would probably be figuring out how to sleep with a charging cable connected, assuming there's a suitable adapter in the first place. More worldbuildy, is things like figuring out how to design environments, tools, and infrastructure that is at least somewhat usable for a broad range of bodyplans and sizes. Like, even something as conceptually simple as a door requires a lot more thought. Just a single knob or handle won't really work, so what workarounds are there? Multiple knobs at different heights? A single, vertical push/pull handle? And so on.

[kittybot]

Oh my god, this is one of my FAVORITE things. I've come up with so much stuff for this, and it's some of the earliest thoughts I had about furry characters - how pants would work and how chairs would work.

Some of the stuff I've come up with:

Pants having a buttoned fly in the back with many buttons going down the whole rear seam so that different species simply need to leave different numbers of buttonholes unbuttoned to make room for differently sized tails, and for ease of putting them on for people with fluffy tails, spaded tails, etc.

Taur couches that basically function like the Mystics' beds in The Dark Crystal; sort of an armless chaise that you rest your lower body on with your upper body staying upright.

Characters with bat- or flying squirrel-style 'wing arms' getting holes pierced all along the patagia where it connects to the body, inserting fleshtunnel-style plugs, and then wearing clothing that laces corset-style through the piercings.

Button flys for back wings, similar to the tail flys. Warm wing covers similar to both of these things as depicted in the Haibane Renmei anime.

Hats such as beanies/toques or baseball caps that fit between the ears, splaying them a little but not uncomfortably, that have elastic straps that go around the base of the ears to keep them in place.

Hoodies with holes for the ears to stick out of, or extended parts of the hood to cover the ears without compressing them.

Hard labor or other work gear inspired by ponyplay and other BDSM harnesses.

Saddle bags for taurs to wear on their taursos like a horse, or for reptilian-style or other thick/muscular tails to wear on their tails.

Harnesses to allow smaller people to ride on the backs of people who can fly, inspired by the dragon saddles from the Dragonriders of Pern book series.

Not so much gear or furniture for oddly shaped people but more a style of oddly shaped person to make using things more easy: bat-winged or other bat-style arm-winged people having the first digit of their wings be shorter and more separated from the rest of the wing to be able to be used as a long index finger to operate with the alar thumb.

Car designs for taurs to sit sphinx-style and operate the peddles with their forefeet while their taurso and hind legs project into the 'back seat' area of the vehicle.

Clothing for taurs and other multi-limbed people.

Chairs for people with different sized tails.

Sweatpants or leggings with a buttoned strap at the top of an elasticized hole for the tail to accommodate different sizes of tail and keep the pants in place.

Belts that go around the tail to keep both the pants and the hole for the tail in place, to prevent flashing butt due to tail flys sagging open etc.

As well as gear less suitable for this forum, you can imagine the various less-SFW body types I've designed things for.

I've thought about this a LOT. Thank you for the word Furgonomics, I've been searching for a non-fetishized term for aptophilia as I'm very interested in this stuff but not in a sexualized way.

[rhubarb_nido]

Here's a cute panel that I like about Furgonomics, from a past Furality convention.

[giantplant]

The question of how furry ungulates hold objects comes up fairly often, especially in the My Little Pony fandom where most of the characters either use magical telekinesis or have "sticky" hooves which can pick up objects. I seem to recall some furry art which proposed some solutions for this problem, such as using hooks that slot into specially-adapted horse shoes, but this was many years ago on Twitter and I'm no longer able to track it down (if anyone reading this knows what I'm talking about, please share a link here!)

I usually draw ungulate and reptile characters with three "fingers" derived from their cloves hooves. I draw fairly cartoony so I don't really have to justify how they get solid keratin to bend.

hoof_hand.png (1.07 KiB) Viewed 102 times

In my setting three-fingered folk are about as common as five-fingered folk so they don't really need to worry too much about special-made tools. I imagine computer keyboards would be the same for them but mice would have the scroll wheel on the side so they can rest their thumb on it and scroll while they click like we can.

Gamepads would have to be more unique. Coming up with it on the spot, they would probably use larger gamepads similar to arcade sticks or the Xbox Adaptive Controller. The stick would be held like a rod and there would be buttons where the fingers and thumb rest. You would also be to push the stick down or pull it up for analog input. I'm not sure if the other side would have another stick or just buttons...



Anyways. My main sona is a plant. Being a plant, he can communicate with other plants through contact by transmitting chemicals through his body. This means that if a plant were to be connected to a computer he would essentially be able to control the computer with his mind as long as he's touching it. I drew a concept for what a "plant keyboard" could look like a while ago (late 2023).

phytoconnector.png (8.25 KiB) Viewed 102 times

Animals can't use these machines, obviously. But if you're a plant all you have to do it make physical contact with the plant part and sort of just think about what you want to input. With practice a plant can achieve TAS levels of efficiency in video games while using these, so competitive games and speedrunning communities are usually divided based on input methods ("physical input" vs "direct input")

That's not to say being a plant doesn't come without its inconveniences... Plants usually like to have lots of skin and hair exposed so they can carry out photosynthesis and exchange air properly. That makes it harder to bundle up in the cold, which can often hit plants harder than it does animals due to plants having higher water content. There are special made transparent or translucent jackets made for plants, so they can put the jacket on and have like, a regular shirt or something on underneath.

I'm sure you can tell I think about this kind of thing a lot

[Linzolle]

Characters with bat- or flying squirrel-style 'wing arms' getting holes pierced all along the patagia where it connects to the body, inserting fleshtunnel-style plugs, and then wearing clothing that laces corset-style through the piercings.

i love thinking about bat wings in an anthro setting with clothes and this is such an interesting idea i had never considered being possible... when it comes to them i always imagined something more like a tank top but with oversize arm-holes to fit the wings through