Sitting Posture, Postural Discomfort, and Visual Performance: A Critical View on the Interdependence of Cognitive and Anthropometric Factors in the VDU Workplace

Abstract

The study focuses on individual and standard visual display unit (VDU) workplaces with respect to performance and muscular load. Three different work settings were realized: The workplace was either adjusted to individual preferences or to the European standard. The third condition mirrored exactly the individual setting, however participants were told that it was set according to another standard. Dependent variables were visual performance in a search task, the rated muscular load, and individual preferences. Results show that both individual work settings yielded a superior performance as compared to the standard. However, performance and muscular comfort improved when participants knew they had adjusted the workplace. Apparently, VDU users follow a intuitive rationale adjusting their work setting minimizing muscular load and optimizing performance.

Sitting Comfort of Ergonomic Office Chairs—Developed Versus Intuitive Evaluation

“…This also led to perceptions of overall sitting comfort that were in line with the genuine ergonomic layout of the chairs. The obtained evidence lends support to the notion that under conditions of instructed sensory awareness, subjective evaluations of sitting comfort will be objectively accurate, at least more accurate than the results of previous studies have shown [7,8,10].…”

“…In other words, the source of their comfort perceptions remained unclear: users just felt better. In the same vein, more recent studies confirmed that the spontaneous evaluation of naïve users may reflect an undifferentiated, schematic or heuristic way of processing information from the tactile and kinaesthetic sensory system [2,8,9,10].…”

The variability and complexity of sitting postural control are associated with discomfort

“…discomfort during driving (Hermann, 2005), chair design/assessment (Vergara and Page, 2002;Kingma and van Dieen, 2009) or work tasks (Starr et al, 1985;Fenety and Walker, 2002;Ziefle, 2003). The main drawback of such approach is the difficulty to discern between factors (e.g.…”

Design of Ergonomically Fit Classroom Furniture for Primary Schools of Bangladesh

“…Second principle is "designing for adjustable range" which put consideration of both 5th-percentile female and 95th-percentile male in order to accommodate 90% of the population [22,23]. Adjustability principle has been much suggested by many researchers as the main ergonomics principles to be followed in designing furniture [24,25]. Last principle is to "design for average" that is mostly being used.…”