Now that there are all sorts of mindblowing computers out there, maybe it’s time to bring office furniture into discussion. More precisely, the chair you sit in while using the computer.
What if, through some wicked engineering, the chair would enable your body to be used as a mouse? Starting from idea that sitting still in a chair all day long (or at least 8 hours) is bad for your health, Govert Flint, a recent graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands created the Dynamic Chair, a seat that motivates you to keep moving all the time. Either that, or the pointer on the screen won’t move at all.
Flint, who enjoys dancing quite a lot, thought of ways to integrate fluid movement patterns into the design of this bionic chair: “It started with my questions about why I like to dance so much, and how it was possible I couldn’t enjoy my work as an architect in an office environment.”
The designer is well aware of the health problems caused by conventional chairs: “Standing desks damage cartilage similarly to sitting. While we sit, we don’t massage our cartilage. Even in our sleep, our body needs to move the joints and therefore has frequent motions.”
At the moment, the bionic chair is but a prototype, but I really hope that Flint will get the necessary support for turning this into a mass-produced item, regardless of how expensive it will get. This product achieves something that not many chairs are capable of: making the user happy, not just fit.
Of course, Flint also knows that there are still a lot of improvements that could be made: “It gets quite close to a comfortable sensation, but will need serious development before someone can work in it for a full day. But many people say that it feels much better than how it looks.”
Don’t expect to use such a chair for gaming, though! The pointer’s movement isn’t that fluid, for the time being, not to mention that a simple RTS or MMORPG game could exhaust the player in just a few minutes.
“At the moment it feels like playing a game to click on an item,” pointed out Flint. “The aim is to make a computer interface that allows people to work with typing, graphics, editing software, browsing and music making for daily use, without having the feeling it goes against their intuition.”
This exercise in design has a simple, but beautiful goal: “My quest is to find an integration of movement, function, and emotions.”
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