Seating comfort and its relationship to spinal profile: A pilot study

Sitting comfort and discomfort and the relationships with objective measures

“…They report some, not-statistically supported, association of comfort with the quality of the spatial fit between the back and the back rest profile. A more detailed study on spinal profile (Bishu et al 1991) points at various specific ranges for the various spinal angles under investigation, where discomfort is minimal. According to the authors the number of subjects was too small to find any statistical evidence.…”

“…(Hertzberg 1958, Floyd andRoberts 1958). This implies that comfort does not necessarily entail a positive affect (Branton 1969) and that the ultimate goal of seat designers is reaching the state of absence of discomfort, where the working individual is oblivious of the fact that he or she is seated (Bishu et al 1991).…”

“…Richards (1980) stresses that comfort is a state of a person involving a sense of subjective well-being, in reaction to an environment or situation. In general, it could be said that comfort is not yet clearly defined, yielding an on-going debate in the literature (see Richards 1980, Lueder 1983, Bishu et al 1991, Zhang et al 1996and Helander and Zhang 1997. Issues that are not under debate are: (1) comfort is a construct of a subjectively-defined personal nature; (2) comfort is affected by factors of a various nature (physical, physiological, psychological); and (3) comfort is a reaction to the environment.…”

Using archetypes to create user panels for usability studies: Streamlining focus groups and user studies

“…The debate stresses the difference between comfort and discomfort. Several researchers [Hertzberg 1958 ;Richards 1980 ;Bishu et al 1981] seem to be making a distinction between two different states of comfort. According to Bishu et al [1981], in particular for seating design, "the goal of the designers is to reach the state of absence of discomfort, where the working individual is oblivious of the fact that he or she is seated."…”

“…Several researchers [Hertzberg 1958 ;Richards 1980 ;Bishu et al 1981] seem to be making a distinction between two different states of comfort. According to Bishu et al [1981], in particular for seating design, "the goal of the designers is to reach the state of absence of discomfort, where the working individual is oblivious of the fact that he or she is seated." In his study, Richards [1980] has suggested that the fact that people rate their subjective responses across the entire continuum from discomfort to comfort indicates that comfort is part of a bipolar dimension that can be attributed to characteristics of design.…”