Do you know of any “ergonomic” designs or devices that actually make things worse for people?
The first example that comes to mind for me is airplane seats. They used to be flat as a board. They were universally mildly uncomfortable. Then they contoured them so that if you were in the 2-sigma size range the highest part of the seat formed a comfy headrest, right against the back of your neck. Unfortunately, that hit me right in the shoulder blades, bending my back and making flying miserable. My wife, who is 15" shorter than me, found that it hit her in the top of the head, bending her head forward at an uncomfortable angle.
Another is “handed” scissors. My dad was right-handed, mom left-handed, and I can use scissors with either hand. We had one pair and it worked for us all. After “ergonomic” scissors came out, we had to keep two pair. I always used to grab the scissors with whatever hand wasn’t holding my work. I never had to shift things around to cut. Once there were “handed” scissors in the house, I always seemed to grab the wrong pair. I just want the old ones back.
Where to start? It might be quicker if you’d started a thread asking for a list of those things that are well designed…
Car seats–not the baby ones, I mean the actual seats in the car. Very similar to airplane seats. Office chairs, ditto.
Hangers–the cheap ones from the dry cleaner are actually easier for me to hang (although they are so cheaply made now, they don’t hold anything) than the store bought ones, that are often too high and curled to get off the rack easily.
Kitchen bowls that wander across the counter when handwhipping stuff. Cheese graters that are a bitch to clean.
Pooper scoopers for cats that don’t really sift the litter.
Garbage cans where the foot lever doesn’t raise the lid fully–very messy.
Toothbrush handles that seem (now) to act as depositories for dried toothpaste–right around where it’s normal to hold said handle. Very odd.
soap shelves in pre-fab shower stalls–they are slanted downward to encourage water drainage–apparently the designers don’t use soap which once wet, tends to be slippery and gravity works!
I have moved on from ergonomics to poor design. Sorry–got carried away…
We have a poor chap at work who, because of a back problem, can’t sit in his office chair to work. So they raised his workstation and he stands to work. He is in the finance group so it is mostly data entry stuff.
I have two mixing bowls made by Oxo that have rubber bottoms. Keeps them firmly in place when mixing.
And with those big ergonomic handles, none of them fit in the toothbrush holders anymore. Those are all still made, apparently, to hold older-style toothbrushes with slim flat rectangular handles.
We used to go kneel in it for fun. Amazing how it took pressure off your back! I suppose your knees would have to be good, though. Mine are kind of grumpy.
Me, too. I’ve also had to tape foam to the corners to keep them from snagging on my pants. And I actually do a lot of work on the desktop, so I’ve had to come to a compromise (if the desktop is too high, it hurts my shoulder. If the keyboard drawer is too low, it rubs against my thighs. If I put the keyboard on the desktop, I don’t have enough room to work when I’m not typing.)
I had one. It worked well for me since I have back problems but my knees are in excellent shape. However, something about the chair was not right. The screws holding it together would always loosen with use, making the chair fall apart. So file that under ergonomics that don’t work.
We have kneeling chairs. They’re great as a change of pace. After a couple weeks I’m ready to go back to a normal chair for a couple weeks. And vice versa.
They’re not hard on your knees; you’re actually resting your weight on the front of your leg below the knee, an area where the bone is pretty much right under the skin.
My one advice is if you are going to buy one, don’t buy a cheap wobbly POS. Don’t have to go all uber health tech new age woo woo about it, but Staples’ cheapest model is about as good as their cheapest convetional chair: not very, and will fall apart in about 2 month’s use.
Have you ever seen those weird computer keyboards that have a big old bump in the middle? They also split the letter keys into left and right sections. Maybe they work for people who constantly type, but they’re an incredible nuisance to anyone else. They’re so different from the regular type that you feel very uncomfortable while typing.
Once I had to spend a week using someone else’s workstation and they had one of these. I HATED IT! I never learned to touch-type; when I use a keyboard my right hand does almost all the typing while my left is pretty much limited to working the shift and, when needed, the CTRl & ALT. I’ve been typing like this for so long that I’m actually pretty good at it, but having to move my hand over that big bump in the middle and work with a keyboard with the left and right sides angled was almost impossible.
Last year I was in pain for about a month thanks to the supa dupa ergonomic chairs at work, which were evidently sized for folks about one foot taller than me and with long legs (I’m short legged).
Once I figured out what the problem was, I traded my supa dupa ergonomic chair for one of the cheap “no moving parts which nobody knows how to use, in fact no moving parts at all” from the visitors’ waiting room. That one was in my size.
I often sit in a position I think of as my “inverted Napoleon”, that is, with one arm tucked behind my back for additional support. That part of chairs where their lower back comes forward a bit is usually found exactly where my ass pops out; the part that’s supposed to be the lumbar rest is far from my back. Whenever an Ergonomic Officer or suchtitle berates me for not resting my back on the backrest, all I have to do is show what kind of hunchbacked posture I get from resting my whole back on the backrest and they shut up.
I’ve never used a keyboard drawer. I need to be able to rest my forearms on the by-lody table, dangit. It’s one of my biggest peeves with regards to “business hotels,” the desks are tiny.
I use an ergonomic keyboard with the bump in the middle, but I touch-type at a ridiculous speed and have a weak right wrist (from an old injury that went unnoticed since it occurred at the same time as an elbow fracture) so I really need the super-duper ergonomics. But even with those keyboards, I have to use extra cushioning under my palms to keep my wrist from suffering.
I recently also bought a super-duper ergonomic chair (I work at home, so have to provide all my own office stuff). Everything is adjustable – seat angle, depth, tilt, arm width, height, back tilt, height – you name it, if it’s something someone would want adjusted, it moves. The only problem? I have a fairly deep lumbar curve so even when I have everything in the chair adjusted perfectly for everything else, it still doesn’t support my back. So I’m currently using that sophisticated bit of ergonomics, a rolled-up towel, as a lumbar support. It works surprisingly well. But you’d think that after spending $450 on a chair, I wouldn’t need to do that.
Don’t even get me started on scissors. As a left-hander, scissors have been the bane of my existence for most of my life.
And who designed keyboards so that the cursor controls and number pad are always on the right side? Even when everything else is comfortable for me, I would still like to have at least the option of using my left hand for those things. It’s a right-handed conspiracy, I tell you! If someone would design a left-handed ergonomic keyboard, I would be their friend for life. Not to mention buy a lifetime’s supply before they go out of business.l
My mom bought some flatware with very large handle-ends that she thought would be easier for her (arthritis) and my dad (Parkinson’s) to handle. They are, but they are so heavy on that end that they flip off of plates and out of bowls when you are carrying them to and from the table. Seems like the designer might have checked this out.
