Sitting up and taking notice of desk design

Many people sit at a desk all day, giving little thought to their badly adjusted chair and poorly positioned PC screen, writes RHYMER RIGBY.

STAFF AT Unit, a Soho post-production house, are sitting pretty, ergonomically speaking.

Video editing involves a lot of sitting down, says facility director Luke Colson, so the company invested in top-of-the-range Aeron chairs, designed with the help of orthopaedic surgeons and physiotherapists. At £600 (€760) each, the chairs were not cheap but, says Colson, "I spend seven hours a day sitting down".

KPMG, the professional services firm, also takes employee health and comfort seriously. Staff can request an expert work-station assessment, with advice on ergonomic suitability.

"For personal assistants and people who do a lot of typing, we have started to introduce a lot of split-screen work stations," says KPMG.

Companies such as these are waking up to the ergonomic wellbeing of employees. It is in the firms' own interests: staff who are slumped over their desks tend to be unproductive and prone to fatigue.

In the UK, health and safety legislation means employers should offer staff advice and training. Where this does not happen, it may be because the employer does not see it as urgent, or because employees do not sign up to it.

Whatever the case, many people sit at a computer all day, giving little thought to the fact that they are in a badly adjusted chair, staring at a poorly positioned screen and using an uncomfortable keyboard and mouse.

Most work stations can easily be made acceptable - by looking at the chair, keyboard and monitor positioning - yet many people do this only when they have crippling back pain or carpal tunnel syndrome, a medical condition affecting the hands and wrists.

Perhaps the best place to start is the chair. Jim Taylour, senior ergonomist at chairmaker Orangebox, says even fairly cheap chairs have become much better. Many are highly adjustable, he says, but a big problem is that people are baffled by the levers and knobs.

Chairs need to be "very intuitive or have instructive graphics on them, or online support; or companies can even have people come round to demonstrate", he says.

The changing nature of the office is also a factor. "Our chairs used to take a maximum weight of 19st, but now we're being asked to design chairs for people up to 30st," says Taylour. "And 24-hour working and hot-desking often mean nobody is in a chair that's right for them."

Sitting in a chair that is not set up correctly can lead to short-term and long-term difficulties, says Bronwyn Clifford, director of Physio at Work, a London physiotherapy practice.

"Everyone's a different size . . . shorter people need chairs with shorter back rests and seat pans. You can get very adjustable chairs . . . and instead of locking your chair, you can make it float with you."

Computer screens should be roughly an arm's length away from you, with the top of the screen about 6cm above your eyes. Yet the popularity of tower-style PC cases, which sit on the floor, means many people's monitors are far too low. Equally, laptops should be positioned on stands rather than desks.

The options for keyboards and mice are more complex. The correct angle for the keyboard varies according to the person, Clifford says, and there is no "one size fits all". Women tend to have narrower shoulders than men and may be better off with a keyboard without a numeric pad, as it gives them a more natural mouse position.

There are esoteric offerings from makers such as PCD Maltron and SafeType. The former's keyboard has a far from conventional layout, with keys split into angled groups. The latter's looks even stranger, as it is split into three sections with keys up two vertical sides. Both companies claim to address many failings of the conventional keyboard.

Stephen Hobday, founder of PCD Maltron, says that ergonomically, the conventional keyboard is bad news. "Our keyboard places the keys to fit fingers and our market is people who type for a living. It's roughly 50/50 between those who suffer from repetitive strain injury and those who don't want to."

The unusual design of PCD Maltron's keyboard makes it more expensive than an ordinary keyboard. SafeType keyboards are also relatively expensive. "The [ conventional] flat keyboard causes the hands and wrists to be twisted, which squeezes tendons," says Dan Spencer, president of SafeType.

Mice also twist the wrist. To combat this, other pointing devices can be used such as the relatively common "trackball" and exotica such as vertical mice. Mice that vibrate to remind you not to rest your hand on them are also available. On a related note, there is also software to remind people to leave their desk once in a while.

Jeremy Myerson, director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre and professor of design studies at the Royal College of Art in London, says one of the most impressive advances he has seen recently is the "sit-stand" desk, which moves so that some work can be done standing and some sitting.

"For people sitting at work stations, a lot of ergonomic problems have been sorted out," says Myerson. "The trouble is, a lot of people have stopped sitting at work stations."

However it does not matter how beautifully designed your work station and chair are if you spend most of your time bent over a laptop.