COMMENTARY--As you're sitting there reading this, have you put much thought into what you're actually sitting on? Neither had we.Unless you are at meetings or on the road a lot you have probably neglected to think much about what is arguably one of the most important items in your office. Sure your PC, the display and other tools are very important in getting your job done with the most efficiency and least frustration as possible but think of this.
To what you entrust your derriere and spine?
Yep, we all spend as much as possible on our PCs, mobile phones, PDAs and quite possibly our desks and then often go out and buy an OfficeWorks "special" office chair. Honestly, I didn't give much of a thought to my office chair either. If it felt OK when I sat in it, that was good enough for me.
However an office chair vendor approached me with a request to test their range of chairs and compare them to comparable models from other vendors. My first reaction was "what the hell do we know about testing office chairs?" We have tested a lot of weird things in our time, but never chairs. And, more to the point what expertise did we have to qualify to test the chairs?
Sure, we could look at the basic construction and placement of controls, but as for chiropractic degrees amongst our staff... zip. The controls are simple: you need to be able to reach them while you're sitting on the chair. And the mechanism is important because many of the tilt mechanisms on chairs are not enclosed, so fingers can potentially be caught in the mechanism while you recline or sit up.
After stating categorically our comments in terms of "comfort" would be purely subjective and not based on any formal training, we took delivery of five chairs from four different manufacturers.
For the record we should also note that the Lab staff are all 180cm tall and range between 83 and 120kg so our body types limited the physical assessment of the chairs.
With this in mind, it was interesting to find that while we all agreed on the mechanics of the chairs, when it came to comfort in some cases the disagreement was quite strong. But in general terms, almost all the chairs tested were more comfortable than our own inexpensive chairs. So what made them better?
Most of the more expensive chairs had contoured cushions made from high quality and quite thick padding that generally enticed the user to sit with their tush towards the back of the seat. This stopped slouching in the seat and improved posture. The back of the chairs was also contoured again to entice good posture and most have a height adjustment to move the lumbar support to the correct height for your spine.
One manufacturer has gone a step further; the lower 35cm or so of the backrest can be "reshaped" to fit the shape of your lower spine. Therapod International chairs, coincidentally the company that approached us to carry out the testing, has four velcro tension straps, which can be tightened or released to change the shape of the back padding--presumably to conform to your spine. We have not seen this feature on any other chair.
So does this provide any benefit, or is it just a case of bells and whistles for the sake of marketing?
In the long term, it may help reduce back problems as the vendor claims. This certainly seems a logical conclusion, but we are not qualified to pass judgement one way or the other. In the short term, we found we could adjust the chair to be comparatively more comfortable than the chairs that did not have this feature.
The mechanics of the system did not overly impress us though. While the method of changing the shape using tension straps is fine, they can only be adjusted from behind the chair after unzipping a cover that hides the mechanism. As a consequence, if you are not happy with the fitting, it may take quite a lot of trial and error repeatedly getting out of your chair and tweaking the straps until its just right. We found it was better to have someone else adjust the straps while you were sitting in the chair. Even so, this takes a couple of repetitions until you get it just right.
I would be very interested to hear comments from anyone qualified in this field.
Steve Turvey is Lab Manager of the RMIT IT Test Labs, and can be reached at stevet@rmit.edu.au.
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