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Ergonomic Office Equipment?
Posted by
Cliff
on Sun Dec 26, 1999 09:27 AM
from the decreasing-the-risks dept.
from the decreasing-the-risks dept.
danimal asks: "As I sit at work typing away I wonder what ergonomic office equipment
slashdotters would reccomend? I have seen (and used) the Herman Miller Aeron and I find it very
acceptable. Then there is the issue of desks. At my office we only
have the "surface, two sides, and a brace" style, which are not very
friendly for typing all day. At one former job and other companies
I have seen Biomorph desks. Those seem to have all the right stuff: Adjustable work levels, tiltable keyboard surfaces, and enough space. What do my fellow geeks use and recommend to keep the pain away?" (More)
We seem to do a lot of topics on ergonomics, but after my bout with wrist pain and JWZ's writeup on the subject, I can't stress how important it is to keep up with these things. So I hope all of these articles we do on this subject will give you folks the tools you need to keep yourselves on the right track in the long term.
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Ergonimic Office Equipment?
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The Aeron (Score:5)
However, while they are fairly nice and look great, they have a few downsides:
* Can be a little chilly. If you find your office cold, the Aeron does not help at all as the air is free to seek heat from the rear! I don't mind this much, but a few other people that have them have mentioned that to me.
* Not very soft. Perhaps that helps you in some way, but I find myself yearning for a big overstuffed executive chair from time to time.
On the other hand, when you spill a drink on the seat it drains right through - perhaps, in the end, that is the chair's greatest strength.
The ironic part about having this chair at work is that even though everyone at work gets one of these if they want, they refuse to upgrade our 17" monitors to a larger size!!
MS Stuff (first real post) (Score:3)
- CP
Active chairs (Score:3)
Recent Experiences (Score:5)
With that in mind, I was very enthused about a year ago when my employer put together a union/management team to begin changing the workplace and upgrading it to OSHA compliance as far as ergonomics. After lots of meetings, we put over 200 people in full ergo setups and learned a few things along the way. Here's a smattering:
1. Classes in using all these new toys were absolutely necessary. For example, every computer is now on a multi-adjustable corner metier table that makes perfect positioning a snap *after* you've been to class. People who tried to set them up before receiving formal instruction tended to wind up with weird and painful configurations.
2. When picking an adjustable table, make sure the keyboard surface is height- and tilt-adjustable completely separately from the CRT.
3. Those expensive gel-type wrist rests are *wonderful*! Everyone seems to love them.
4. When we bought supplies at a "trial" ratio (getting just a couple of units for every dozen people to try so that we could see who wanted things before committing money), we found that scarcity makes people want things. For example, experience has shown that only about 10 percent of users will actually use a separate foot rest. (Ours are nice ones by Rubbermaid.) Thus, we bought them on a ratio of one to five users and figured they'd get passed around till the people that actually needed them wound up with them. Ha! Not a chance! As soon as the workers saw that these things were going to be scarce, they all suddenly felt a need to latch onto one. The initial shipment went like loaves of bread off the back of a U.N. relief truck and the have-nots have been screaming for the things ever since. (Unfortunately, the money it will take to equip everybody isn't in the budget right now.) I know that when we finally get one for each person, most of them will wind up in a corner, gathering dust. But compliance with the Union agreement trumps all else and we'll have to find the money.
5. As for telephone headsets, I consider them a valuable ergo accessory. Unfortunately, we bungled their distribution the same way as the footrests.
6. Chairs were a huge problem. If you're putting new chairs in a large unionized shop, do what we did: Let the Union pick the chair. People are pretty picky about where they park their butts all day. We knew that whatever we chose would be hated by someone enough for them to file a grievance. By letting the Union do the choosing, management totally avoided the problem. "You don't like your chair? It hurts your back? Sure, you can file a grievance. Just figure out a way to file it against your own Union! Hahahahaha!!!"
7. As a Union member, I oversaw the chair selection. We narrowed the field to about 10 different chairs based on basic OSHA specs and the ability of vendors to meet those specs and get us samples. We then had every employee come into the sample display room in rotation, sit in every chair, and vote. The final selection was a high-backed fully adjustable chair with the name "SuperFurntiture" embossed on the back. I have no idea who actually made the thing, but just about everybody could live with them. They don't have too many adjustments and they don't have any detachable accessories, but everybody can get them into a configuration that's acceptable.
8. Another chair that was available for vote broke during the voting. You know that when a chair back snaps and dumps an employee on their butt right in front of everyone, nobody is going to vote for that one! However, this particular chair was "modular" according to the sales rep. Everything could unplug and be replaced. At first, this looked like a versatile option. We eventually realized, however, that what it really meant was having to buy, warehouse, and install a mind-boggling array of accessories that would make for serious administrative headaches. I was very glad this chair broke and I would counsel people to avoid any such chairs that seem to have been designed by guys who spent too much time playing with Transformers when they were kids.
9. The Aeron chair referenced in the lead-in was a very interesting case. People either loved or hated it. There was almost no in-between. The problem with it is that it's TOO adjustable. It uses a huge wind-up (watch-type? I don't know what to call it.) spring to set the basic firmness of the chair. Loosened up, it's suitable for a 70-pound waif. Tightened up, it's suitable for a 300-pound guy like me. Problems occur, though, when a large person sits down in a chair adjusted for a light person. The chair immediately tips completely back, causing people to catch themselves, bolt out of the chair, and declare it a menace. A large person who just plops down in one of these chairs that's adjusted for a small person may very well find themselves dumped on their back on the floor. This is definitely not a good thing and makes the chair unsuitable for an office where chairs are shared. However, I personally felt it was by far the most comfortable chair when adjusted properly. (That opinion was almost universally shared by people who let me adjust the chair to their weight *before* they sat down. First impressions mean a lot.) If I had to get an ergo chair for myself, this would be my choice.
Equipping a large office to OSHA-compliant levels was expensive and difficult, but our experience in the new office environment convinces us that it's well worth it. In fact, despite the cost, I'm now in the middle of re-equipping my workstation at home. Today the gel-type wrist rest, tomorrow the Aeron!
:-)
Ergonomics is hard (Score:3)
Probably one of the contributing factors in my lack of carpal tunnel is the fact that I use five different keyboards regularly. I use them in different positions. I use a variety of software with a variety of different typing patterns. I fear if I were to trying to make all of the various work environments that I use ergonomically correct, and presumably much more similar to each other, that I might do damage because I would develop a similarly bad posture or pattern of use in each one.
I LOVE my wireless keyboard (Score:3)
It sits on my lap, or I can plop it down on a blueprint when taking data off a print into CAD, or wherever it is comfortable. I use the Logitech "wireless desktop" which uses radio, not IR, so I don't have to worry about line-of-sight. It is ever so much easier on the wrists than an ordinary wire-bound keyboard sitting up on a desk. When your wrists get tired of having the keyboard here, move it over there. The only thing I don't like is the lack of a keypress "click." Go to a local Office Depot or CompUSA and check it out.
Alas, apparently you can't get the clean-looking original model like I've got any more; instead Logitech now offers one that looks like the original but defaced with ugly little warts all along the top, like the keyboards that come with new Compaq Presarios, HP Pavilions, and other PCs aimed at the home market. (If you use their driver, which I suppose works only under MS OSes, when you tap these warts they fire up your CD player, your Internet browser, and so on.)
It also comes with a wireless three-button-plus-scroll-wheel mouse. I'd prefer a wireless trackball but the mouse is OK. There's a nice blank spot in the upper right corner of the keyboard where a trackball would fit perfectly (hint, hint, Logitech).
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:The Aeron (Score:3)
The side-to-side motion used with a bug or electronic keyer is a lot easier on the wrist, though I still wouldn't recommend doing it for hours at a time.
--
Re:Recent Experiences (Score:3)
A: Not *everyone* likes gell wrist rests. I dislike wrist rests of any kind. i find them restrictive and uncomfortable.
B: Wrist rests are *bad* for you. Resting your wrist on something, no matter how soft, encourages you to use your wrist and hand muscles to swivle your hand around to reach keys. It is *Far* better to practice pianist-like posture and simply use your arms to move your hands around.
I endured 6 years of piano lessons when i was young. I'm a network administrator by day and avid computer geek by night. I spend more time typing than sleeping, and the only wrist strain i experience is from using pointing devices.
Why? Because if you get your knuckles smacked with a ruler enough times you learn to keep your wrists *Up*.
On the subject of pointing devices, I'm most happy with my Logitech Trackman FX. This is the weird angular one with the large trackball. Try it some time. It doesn't force a right-handed person to rotate their wrist to operate it.
Re:The Aeron (Score:3)
Ergonomics essentials (Score:3)
(i) A decent sized desk with enough room to have the keyboard and monitor straight in front of you *and* enough left over to have a standard letter sized sheet of paper in front of that. All too often I've had to work at a shallow desk where because of the depth of the monitor, and the desk being pushed up against a wall or another desk, I've had to have the monitor off to the side. And free space on either side too for your manuals and notepad etc.
(ii) A good keyboard. I don't like too much cleverness in keyboards. The classic KeyTronic KYB601 is my choice. Their new "ergonomic" KT2001 sucks rocks.
(iii) A good quality mouse. It should be the right size and shape to fit the hand in its resting position. I quite like the Microsoft Intellimouse myself. Even the old classic MS "Dove bar" mouse wasn't half bad. Watch out though, the OEM version isn't made to the same high quality as the proper retail version, and it shows.
(iv) A good quality high res monitor. If you need to have several windows open at a time you need 1600x1200 to avoid unnecessary mouse movement. At that resolution you need a 19inch diagonal or bigger. And the refresh rate has to be 75Hz or more, and small fonts should be clearly readable.
Oh yeah, and (v): A nearby vending machine with chocolate bars in it
If I've got all those things then just about any standard adjustable office chair will do. Wrist rests? Pah.
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