In an intriguing coincidence, two top-names in ergonomic-focused industrial design have introduced new chairs that take different approaches to fit and comfort. As with my recent discussion on handle design, chairs are another iconic challenge to ergonomic designers - thousands of versions, but no exact set of rules to achieve perfect fit and comfort.
Core77 posted a "living with" review of the Herman Miller Embody chair. In other words, they actually "spent every day for just over a month living with the chair, putting it through its paces, and trying to wear it out." I encourage you to read the full review of this innovative chair, but from an ergonomics perspective I was most interested in how the chair reacted with the user:
"The designers apparently intended this chair to encourage you to move around in it, and there's a five-page PDF detailing how the chair was designed to promote "tissue perfusion"..in other office chairs I've used, I will of course occasionally stretch; but the difference with the Embody was that I was stretching into the chair, using parts of it like some kind of Pilates ball. It really has to be experienced to be understood."
A simpler alternative is the the eponymous Diffrient Work Chair for Humanscale, reviewed by ID Magazine's editor-in-chief Julie Lasky, Diffrient has been working on the chair for a decade, so that
"The user’s weight automatically transfers a proportionate force for recline, eliminating the need for adjustment and the usual spring mechanism; leaning back ramps the seat upward and forward to achieve the appropriate upright or reclined position...Though he considered a forward tilt mechanism in early Diffrient chair prototypes, he chose not to have one in the end because of the added cost and complexity. Besides, he says, the “mechanism encourages the common but undesirable position of people straining to operate the computer.”
While these two chairs differ in their ergonomic approach - the Diffirient chair is expected to cost less than half of the Embody - they are designed with different functions and towards different uses - so a direct comparison is not necessarily relevant. But as a researcher focused on both quantitative fit and qualitative comfort, I am looking forward to experiencing the state of the art from two of the most respected design names in the industry.
