An Ergonomic Evaluation of Office Chairs

Ten ergonomic office chairs, chosen from a sample of eighty‐four, were evaluated in an ergonomic field study. Twenty office employees used each of the chairs for one day. The chairs were evaluated using four different subjective methods: body part discomfort, general comfort rating, a chair feature evaluation checklist, and a ranking procedure. The chair users generally had difficulties in perceiving and expressing comfort and discomfort which was required in the two first methods. The latter methods produced more informative results including significant differences between the chairs. The study identified several distinct features related to chair comfort including the design of the seat pan, back rest, arm rests, and ease of adjustability.