Furniture

Knowledge workers sit too much.  Research has shown that their sedentary habits are bad for their physical and mental well-being – but if workers have the opportunity to stand while working, will they?

Zhu and Argo have completed a preliminary analysis of the influence of various arrangements of chairs on the best ways to persuade people to take particular actions.  Subjects in their study sat in a chair among other chairs all of which were arranged either in a traditional chair circle with all chairs facing inward, in a square with all chairs facing inward or in a chair facing inward that was either beside a row of other chairs facing inward or in a line of chairs perpendicular to another line of chairs, all facing inward.  The first seating arrangement was ca

Fitzgerald and Danner summarize some of the ways that our evolutionary past should influence current office design; a topic that is discussed regularly here (for example, https://researchdesignconnections.com/pub/arguments-biophilic-architecture).

Miller-Cochran and Gierdowski have learned that flexible classroom design cost-effectively supports composition (writing) classes.  More specifically, when students are using their own laptop computers during class “in a flexible classroom, which included mobile furnishings, mobile whiteboards, and multiple LCD screens for projection . . . .

Recent research has shown that people doing office work need to be able to stand while working, when they choose to do so (for related information, see http://researchdesignconnections.com/pub/why-should-every-work-space-pro...). A new study, conducted by Chourasia and colleagues, indicates that sit-stand desks should not be introduced in a vacuum, without considering potential modifications to other tools used by workers, such as computer software: “Participants . . .

Researchers at Durham University explored the learning repercussions of multi—touch, multi-user desks. Their findings, derived “from a 3-year project working with over 400 pupils, mostly 8-10 year olds, show that collaborative learning increases both fluency and flexibility in maths. It also shows that using an interactive ‘smart’ desk can have benefits over doing mathematics on paper. Using multi-touch desks in the new classroom, the children were able to work together in new ways to solve and answer questions and problems using inventive solutions.