So I just discovered that the chair I have been sitting in at my desk for the past 8 months, a Herman Miller Aeron chair, won “Design of the Decade” by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Business Week magazine. Apparently it promotes healthier posture and enhanced lower-back comfort through an ergonomic solution named PostureFit, and a Pellicle suspension system that distributes weight and conforms to each person’s shape.

There are a few things that come to mind given this recent discovery:

1. Considering how absurdly expensive these are, I am both shocked, and pleasantly impressed by the fact that my employer supplied our entire office with these.
2. Considering how absurdly expensive these are, the awards it has won, and the fact that it is promoted as an ergonomic chair that promotes ‘healthier posture’, I am wondering why I constantly leave work with a back-ache.
3. Why, after 8 months, has my chair yet to conform to my shape?

To be fair, I will admit that the chair is extremely comfortable, and I probably wouldn’t trade it. Does anybody else use one of these? What’s your experience?

It should come as no surprise to my readers that Ergonomics is a topic of great interest to me being as how this blog is about ways to improve your work happiness and productivity. Here is a brief definition I grabbed from Wikipedia:

Ergonomics (or human factors) is the application of scientific information concerning objects, systems and
environment for human use (definition adopted by the International Ergonomics Association in 2007).

The goal of ergonomics and human factors is to make the interaction of humans with machines as smooth as possible,
enhancing performance, reducing error, and increasing user satisfaction through comfort and aesthetics.

While most of the gadgets I post about are simply pre-existing products with a unique design twist, or added features, very few of them offer any significant benefit to the user through daily use. Thus, I decided it was time to reverse that trend and to start giving you guys something you can actually put in a request for at your job through the HR department (seriously!)

To start it off, here is a product a work associate recommended to me after I had complained about some pain in my right forearm after a long day of tedious mouse clicking. The Evoluent Vertical Mouse is designed for comfort and the promotion of neutral wrist and forearm posture, thereby eliminating the risk of pain conjured by resting your arm awkwardly on your desk while you click away your day. Although it certainly took me a while to get used to the different layout of the buttons, and the somewhat extreme sensitivity of the mouse, I definitely noticed less stiffness in my arm at the end of the day.  Although I was somewhat baffled at first over why there were 5 buttons, as opposed to the 3 I’m used to on a normal computer mouse, I eventually discovered that you can actually program them for different functions within various applications.

Office master recommended!