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Doug Kokot

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Publications by Doug Kokot (bibliography)

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1988
 
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Cornell, Paul and Kokot, Doug (1988): Naturalistic Observation of Adjustable VDT Stand Usage. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting 1988. pp. 496-500.

Ergonomists have long recommended user adjustable furniture for office workers. A majority of the recommendations have been based upon anthropometric models of ergonomically "correct" postures. Research validation of these proposals is sparse, and those that have been conducted are predominantly laboratory oriented. This research observed the use of adjustable furniture in a field setting. Three questions were addressed: 1) what are the preferred settings when the equipment has been used for a length of time?; 2) do people change the settings?; and 3) how do these measures relate to anthropometric data? The offices of 91 workers were measured covertly. Twenty-one offices were measured once, 41 twice, and 29 three times. All the offices had an adjustable VDT stand with independent height and angle adjustments for both the keyboard and display. Seat height had a mean and standard deviation of 20.0 and 0.85 inches. The height of the home row of the keyboard had a mean of 29.1 and a standard deviation of 1.2 inches. For the display surface the mean and standard deviation were 29.7 and 1.3 inches. In terms of repeated measures, 62.9% of the chair heights, 57.1% of the keyboard heights, and 91.4% of the display heights did not change. Of the observed changes, 90% were between 0.25 in and 0.75 inches. None of the observed heights correlated well with stature, seated eye height, or popliteal length. One correlation was 0.32, all others were less than 0.20. The results are similar to other published data in that the measured settings are much higher than anthropometric models would predict. More significantly, they do not match the new ANSI guideline nor the proposed CSA guideline for adjustable furniture. This suggests that the ergonomic theories behind these recommendations need to be modified to more closely reflect actual use products.

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Changes to this page (author)

16 Feb 2010: Modified
25 Jun 2007: Added

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May 25

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

-- Alfred North Whitehead

 
 

Featured chapter

Read the fascinating history of Wearable Computing, told by its father, Steve Mann

Read Steve's chapter !

 
 

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