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Sit tight: Latest computer chairs take seat as high-tech tools

By Doug Bedell
The Dallas Morning News

In the quest for the perfect computer seat, mankind has risen to new heights.

Designers have spent so much time and money studying the modern office worker's seating positions and daily habits that many don't even call Workstation chairs "furniture."

"A chair is not a piece of furniture at all," says Marvin Dainoff, director of the Center for Ergonomic Research at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. "It's a working tool."

Likewise, Dainoff says there is no such thing as an "ergonomically correct" computer chair.

"Everyone is different, so you don't have just one solution. You need adjustability for a variety of shapes and sizes and tasks," he says.

But in designing computer chairs for the masses, makers must create a fit for a broad range of workers. That requires, at a minimum, adjustable-height pneumatics so people can sit with feet flat on the floor.

Dainoff and other experts say it's also important to have a 100- to 120-degree angle between the thighs and back. And, they say, the chair should let the elbows settle into a right angle for working with the keyboard and mouse.

But the mere act of sitting produces stress. Spinal discs are compressed.

Muscles held in one position too long grow painful. In fact, studies show that people who sit all day suffer as much lower back pain as those who stand for the same hours.

So, Dainoff says, a properly fitted and adjusted chair could be one of the best investments a computer user can make.

After more than five years of experimenting, manufacturers have some unique solutions to the human-computer ergonomic puzzle.

Perhaps the most astounding come from Personal Computing Environments (PCE, http://www.mypce.com/), whose designs eliminate the need for a desk.

Rather than building a chair to fit the work environment, PCE constructs a tubular aluminum framework that wraps the workstation around the user. Flat-panel monitors hang directly overhead and in front of the user.

Hundreds of the PCE products, PeaceMaker and MasterPeace, have been sold to financial traders, call centers, gamers and other computing enthusiasts who spend hours digesting information from multiple displays.

Chief technical officer Ben Moglin, a designer with a Zen background, considers workstations backward in concept, says PCE marketing communications executive David Thompson.

"The one thing that always disturbed him is that no computer workstations are designed for the human first," Thompson says. "The human's always an afterthought."

Prices for PeaceMaker start at $4,000 and for MasterPeace at $7,600. For the My Peace option, which begins at $9,000, company designers add options such as a luxury massage chair, two 22-inch flat-panel monitors and surround-sound speakers.

The PCE models are built using the product of another company, Humanscale (http://www.humanscale.com/).TV viewers may recognize Humanscale's $900 Freedom chair, renowned for its simplicity, from "Ally McBeal."

Instead of knobs, the Freedom uses a mechanism that senses a person's weight and adjusts the backrest tension to provide support. Synchronized armrests adjust with a simple motion, and the headrest moves into place as a user reclines, then out of the way as he sits up. Options include a load-distributing gel seat — a first in office seating.

Niels Diffrient, the Freedom chair's designer, says most controls on computer chairs go untouched, much like the blinking 12:00 clocks on VCRs.

"In fact," he says, "such controls are barriers to movement. With Freedom, we've minimized the necessity for manual controls and maximized the ability for natural, spontaneous movement."

Herman Miller (http://www.hermanmiller.com/) created a dot-com icon with its Aeron, an unupholstered body hammock made of a breathable, flexible black mesh that molds to the user's body.

At one point, any dot-com startup worth its salt spent $900 or more apiece on these highly adjustable computer chairs just for the cachet. In today's leaner times, Aerons can be grabbed for $600 or less on eBay.

Herman Miller has just introduced its first post-bubble chair, the $640 Mirra. It incorporates a few manual adjustments that are easy to tweak to individual body types. The mesh-seat suspension caresses the worker's rear, and the tilt design lets the body pivot at the hip, knee and ankle.

The backrest is engineered to flex. Expect the Mirra to challenge competitors in its price range, including the $799 Leap chair from Steelcase. The Leap chair's main selling point is a seat back that conforms to a user's "spineprint."

There are also budget-minded options, such as the $349 Metric (http://www.roomandboard.com/), with its mesh back and full complement of adjustments. The $229 Verksamt (http://www.ikea.com/) features a flexible backrest that locks at any angle.

Whatever your choice, Dainoff suggests trying out computer chairs for longer than a minute or two.

"What may feel good in 20 seconds might not feel good at the end of the day," he says.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company

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