Computer Workstation Ergonomics

I’m horribly bad at sitting “well”. Even though I have a relatively good chair, I almost never sit properly. As I’m typing this, I’m sitting in a weird posture with one of my feet on the chair’s surface where you’d sit and not on the floor… I sit like that pretty often.

For everyone who thinks sitting at a 90 degree angle is best. Check this out. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm

This is a very interesting link; thanks for posting it. Don’t take any of this as dogma-- I think a lot of the ergonomic advice is relatively true, plus or minus 20 percent. It’s not a science, so feel free to adjust to whatever feels right to you.

Laptops are a nightmare from both an ergonomic and developer productivity perspectives

So the lesson is to use an external monitor and keyboard if you’re going to be on a laptop for any length of time.

Basically, you fire it up and it monitors your use in the background. It reminds you to take breaks periodically and runs through stretches you can do during the breaks to keep you from “freezing” in one position for too long

I’m familiar with this type of program. One client of ours has this program mandated on all their PCs. Its intentions are good, but I personally find its interruptions INCREDIBLY annoying and more than a little patronizing. But then I’m the same guy who turns off all IM notifications, too, so maybe I’m not the right audience.

Here is how I sit.

I sit in my chair completely reclined with my feet on my desk. This then creates a great place for my laptop to sit in my lap. However my legs will fall asleep, and sometimes take long times to recover.

I think I will try putting some of your advice into practice next time I work on my project.

Hey Jeff, the other health/ergo factor to consider are breaks and stretching. Talk a walk/bathroom break every couple of hours and try to stretch at least once/day.

The web is filled with sites for this, but I find the wrist stretch (elbow straight, pull back finger, then push down hand) and calf/hamstring stretches are really important. Our legs were not really designed for a lifetime of sitting and after a few sessions with the massage therapist in February, I can tell you that tension accumulates in the calf/hamstring region at a pretty crazy rate.

Ergonomics are important but it does not guarantee a work life free from pain.
Endless rearranging of my work environment according to various ergonomic guides never had much impact on my neck, shoulder and wrist pain. It was only when I tried the Alexander Technique and become more acutely aware of just how much unnecessary tension and effort I was using at the computer that I was able to eliminate the pain and discomfort.
Before coughing out the dough for various ergonomic products it might be worth having a session of Alexander Technique or Feldenkrais (mentioned by Tim above), you may find that you don’t really need to change that much about your setup after all.

http://www.alexandertechnique.com/articles/computer/

No no no! I don’t care what they say, it hurts my neck if the top of the monitor is at eye level. The middle of the monitor should be at eye level. This is doubly true when the monitor is a portrait monitor.

I fail to see why a monitor at eyelevel should improve your ergonomics. I the monitor not at eye-level your neck-muscles will be ever so slightly at work. Is that a bad thing?

I don’t think so. Your neck is made for holding your head a long while slightly inclined. Compare with people wandering through rough areas looking on the floor or compare with people reading a book.
Positions where you don’t use your muscles are not necessarily better positions.

In fact I think that this a very individual requirement.

Holy cow! That’s a lot of comments to read!
I stand about 50% of the day (give or take a few hours depending on how I feel).

I use a milk crate on my desk to put the keyboard on, then when I want to sit, it moves to the other side of the desk of under it. (A separate box hold the mouse up.
Since my monitors tilt, while I’m standing, I look down at them at a relatively natural angle, then just tilt them down when I sit.

I’m with everybody else who disagrees with “top of the monitor at eye level”. I’ve raised my monitors so that when I hold my head straight, I’m looking at the middle of the monitor (roughly). My neck feels much better now.

Does anybody know why they would recommend eye level being with the top of the monitor? Do any of the ergonomics recommendations explain “why?”

Great information for ergonomic office chairs and office furniture can be found on my website:
http://www.1208frank.info/finding-ergonomic-office-chairs-and-office-furniture-in-new-jersey.html

I prefer to sit slouched backwards with my feet up on a footstool. My back, neck, and eyes never get sore or worn out, but after long periods of time I can definitely feel it in my wrist. Especially after playing video games. I can’t help but rest my wrists while using the keyboard or mouse.

A programming career is supposed to offer advantages such as longevity and limited physical risk. Unlike an athlete or blue-collar worker whose livelihood depends on physical ability and can be cut short by injury or aging, most programmers should expect to work right up until retirement, as long as they can raise donut to mouth. But a nasty secret in the software industry is how repetitive stress injuries including carpal tunnel and cubital tunnel syndrome can make programming a literal pain and threaten your career.

http://www.devtopics.com/programmers-nightmare-cubital-tunnel-syndrome/

Steve: “For everyone who thinks sitting at a 90 degree angle is best. Check this out. <a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm””>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm"

I have to wonder if they pointed the MRI dealie at anyone’s neck during their experiments. Sure, leaning back like that is good for your back… but after a half hour of it my neck is absolutely killing me. A chair with a headrest that could angle forward when you lean back and support your head might help…

here’s a solution I bet none of you thought of…

http://www.connectedpixel.com/blog/ergonomic/standup

Check out www.novadesk.com, they sell desks where you place the monitor under the table behind a pane of glass. The idea is that it simulates where you hold a newspaper or magazine, that your eyes naturally actually look slightly downward. I used one of these in college, and I loved it. One problem is that it doesn’t accommodate dual monitors, obviously.

I think what is lightly touched on in this thread but many people do not realize is that there are several ways to type. Being a touch-typist myself I was originally trained to always lift my wrists when typing and I have never had an issue when I practice this. Most often problems are caused by using the mouse (during which I keep hitting the side of my desk) or using a keyboard with wristrests which is usually more dangerous to me than lifting my hands. YMMV of course.

Thanks for the article! Right now i am lounging on my futon and my back is defintely not straight. Maybe i should make a mense before we have problems. :slight_smile:

NASA did alot more work on ergonomics than MicroSoft and their findings are not the same.

Their results favored a reclining person and work in the lap.

In my job (a unix sysadmin for an internet company) I have to say that having the top of your monitor is totally wrong for me. I spend most of my day in a terminal/console/command-line utility ssh’d in to various servers. When you have this application maximized to fit the screen, most of what you do is on the very bottom line; the line where you need to type commands. This forced me to have to look down at the bottom edge of my screen. I ended up putting a couple thick computer books under my monitor to raise it up. This has helped so much with my next strain; strain I had just kind of accepted.

The other big thing that helped me was to increase the size of the font on the application I’m using. This prevented me from having to lean in too far (usually just my head moving) to the monitor to see what was happening.

Michael,

Many people do sit in a “bolt upright” position which may well place too much strain on the lower back. However the best solution, rather then sitting in a partial reclined position, is to sit “naturally” upright. When none of the muscles in the torso and around the spine are overly tensed the torso will naturally be upright due to the effect of tensegrity within the body (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity). This article (by biomechanist Stephen Levin) describes how spine exhibits the properties of a tensegrity system:
http://www.biotensegrity.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=12Itemid=29.

When your spine is ‘naturally’ upright the weight from your upper body is not put on your lower spine, instead the musculature in your torso is available to support this weight ensuring that your spine is relatively free from strain.