The Design of Everyday Office Chairs by Mary McCall

In the first chapter of Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things, Norman discusses his problem with doors. He admits that so simple a technology should not be seen as so confusing. Or so we think. I’m sure when most of us (and by “us” I mean Americans) think of a door, we summon the image of rectangular piece of wood with a knob on it. And yes, there are many doors like that, but there are also doors made of glass, metal, or other materials, doors that push forward or are meant to be pulled back, doors that slide, doors that don’t open by human hands, or doors that are not meant to be opened at all or any at certain times.   

When we approach a door, we often look for some kind of signifier (what Norman describes as something which signals which actions are possible and how they should be done) that shows us what the door's affordance (an interaction between people and their environment) is. Often times, we know that we can push or pull a door and so look for something to signal the kind of interaction that we should be having with the door. Sometimes this signifier is a knob or handle or even a flat panel that indicates that the door should be pushed. However, when those signifiers are absent or unclear, this “simple” piece of technology suddenly becomes complicated

This, finally, brings me to office chairs.

Office chairs make me weary because every time I see one, I am reminded of previous battles I’ve had with its kind and lost. When I walk into a computer lab with office chairs, I feel them silently judging me.

Why? Let’s start with this specimen here (Fig. 1.).

Fig. 1. Innocent-looking office chair

At first glance, it looks pretty innocent. It looks somewhat comfortable, despite having supported the posteriors of how many grad students before me. And, at second glance, it seems easy enough to adjust the seat to my desired height (Fig. 2).

I see the lever on the right-hand side and think, “Ah, OK. If I pull the lever up or push it down, I’ll likely move the seat in some kind of direction and eventually get it to the height I need.”

Hah. Wrong.

I sit in the seat, grab the lever, and pull. Nothing. I push it. Nothing. I start jiggling the lever harder, because surely that will do something. Nothing. I move the lever to the left and right just for kicks. The seat refuses the budge.

“OK,” I think. “Maybe there’s some kind of lock on it. Maybe there’s a knob on the left I have to turn to release the lever.”

So I get up, squat down, and look under the seat. Nope. No knob. Just the lever.

Fig. 2 "I won't make you cry in frustration!"

“Maybe it’s broken. Maybe it just gave up on life and this height is all it has to give.” 

I roll the chair away—it stares at me with dejection—and grab one of its buddies nearby. I repeat the same operations. Still nothing.

Then, not far away, I see Option #2. This one is certainly the grandfather of the first seat. It looks more worn--if that’s possible with these chairs--the post is rusty, and its base is dusty and dirty. But hey, it looks solid enough and could be easier to handle than these younger whipper-snappers (Fig. 3).

Fig.3 

When I sit in it, my hand shoots down the right-hand side, but there’s no lever. Leaning over to the left proves no lever either. Against my better judgment, I reach my hand under the seat. There’s only a knob there (Fig. 4). Should I turn it? Does this knob secure the seat to its base or does it adjust the height? I twist it in either direction, but nothing happens.  

“Fine,” I mutter, grabbing the first chair I tried. I’m used to talking to myself and inanimate objects.  “I’ll deal with the height. I wanted this chair so low that I could type with my nose anyway.”

Fig. 4 "I swear I'm not covered in gum."

Looking back, maybe the green chair wasn’t meant to be adjusted (but then why does it look like a chair that could be?) or maybe I just never figured out the right mechanism to achieve the solution I wanted. With the purple chair, the lever did act as a signifier suggesting the affordance I could have with the chair, but it ended up being a confusing one since it did not act in the way I imagined it would.

Fig. 6

Fig.5 Is there hope?

However, not all office chairs are evil spawn (Fig. 5). While this one has *two* levers (oh boy), each lever does have a clear signifier of how it’s meant to be operated and what result will ensue (hooray!) (Fig. 6). Overall, then, this chair is a good example of what Norman describes as the “two most important characteristics of good design”: discoverability and understanding (3). While discoverability suggests which actions are possible and how to perform them, understanding indicates how the product is meant to be used. With office chairs, the understanding is clear: you’re meant to sit in them. However, what separates an office chair from an “ordinary” one is that its mechanics can individualize even the seemingly simple action of sitting. But if the operation of these mechanics is unclear—as my failed attempts above suggest—then the second piece of good design, discoverability, will be missing. 

Thus, the vague signifier of a lever on an office chair is often not enough to suggest the affordances of the chair itself. Yes, office chairs have been around for quite some time and even as a lefty, I’m conditioned to expect the lever to be on the right-hand side of the chair. (Recall how my hand automatically shot down with Option #2 before I even realized there was no lever.) And interestingly enough, I’m also conditioned to pull the levers of most office chairs up even though I want the seat to go down. 

However, when pulling—in any direction—does not cause the seat to move, or there are so many levers that I have no clue as to which exact one to use, then my experience as a user of this product becomes fraught. This is where signifiers like the images on the levers of Option #3 come in handy and also reflect good design. Of course, these signifiers are not in themselves a guarantee that the mechanisms will work (given how much they’re in use everyday and how easily they can be jammed or broken), but even these signals go much farther in making what should be a simple technology (like an office chair) actually simple to use. Or so we hope.

Works Cited

Norman, Don. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books, 2013. Print.