Over the past four years, ChairsFX has been documenting ergonomic trends from different perspectives. This page lists the best ChairsFX articles organized into topics. Those researching gaming chairs, office chairs, or modern ergonomic principles will find all of their research needs covered below.
Top Stories Organized By Topic
If you’re new to ergonomic desk working concepts, these topics will get you up to speed:
- Ergonomic Starter Fundamentals: ergonomic concepts for desk workers are simpler than many assume. Start here to get your head around the basics.
- Gaming Chair User Guides: walkthroughs for beginners. Go from a postural zero to hero in less than a week.
- Modern Multi-Device Gaming Chair Standards: back and neck support — plus movement — across multiple computing devices is the new objective.
- Work From Home (WFH) Fundamentals: setup parameters for beginners + power users in the multi-device computing era.
Big-Picture Ergonomics
For a broader look at the seating industry, we’ve also got historical and industrial reports:
- Ergonomic Seating History: Three reports (gaming, office, and school seating) spanning 1635 to 2022. Track the evolution from tree stumps to fancy ergonomic chairs.
- Gaming/Office Furniture Industry Reports: a lockdown-driven rise of B2C gaming chair sales crushes the outdated B2B models of the office furniture giants!
Gaming Chair Ergonomics For Beginners
In seating terms, ‘ergonomic’ simply means ‘adjustable’. All chairs qualify as ergonomic by having three essential ergonomic features.
How do these adjustable features help? If all ergo chairs have these essentials, what’s the difference between an office and gaming chair? Where do these standards come from? Who made them?
Find answers to all of these questions below:
- Ultimate Ergonomic Chair Guidelines: what does ‘ergonomic’ mean? What is its purpose? OSHA, BIFMA, the Handbook of Human Factors & Ergonomics, and several peer reviews all have the same answer. ‘Ergonomic’ means ‘adjustable’. The point of a chair’s adjustable features is to support neutral postures.
- Dynamic Neutral Postures: every ergonomic chair in existence is designed to support a 25-45° lower back curve and 0° neck tilt.
- Gaming Chairs Vs Office Chairs: ergonomic racing-style chairs vs non-ergonomic office chairs.
- Gaming chairs vs Ergonomic Office chairs: both support good posture while sitting. One provides more reliable physiological support. The other provides more versatile psychological appeal.
- Why Gaming Chairs Are Good For The Back, Neck, And Posture: how neutral postures boost health, wellness, and productivity.
Ergonomic Chair User Guides
Step-by-step guides to help you get the best out of your ergonomic investments. Master gaming chair best practices, troubleshoot (inevitable) pain flare-ups and get into a rhythm.
Once your discipline sharpens up, you can also strive for biomechanical postural perfection if you want.
- Gaming Chair User Guide: a step-by-step guide to healthy gaming chair practices.
- Lumbar Support Biomechanics: beginner’s guide to mastering the most important ergonomic component.
- Best Adjustable Lumbar Types: good Ergonomics (height and depth adjustability) Vs gimmicks
- Ultimate Gaming Chair Sizing Guide: for the best back support, a good chair fit makes a big difference. Learn the key sizing specs for your particular needs.
- Troubleshooting: Why Does My Gaming Chair Hurt My Back? Pain problems are usually caused by poor sitting techniques. Use this step-by-step checklist to isolate and fix the source of your problem.
- How To Use A Gaming Chair Headrest For Perfect Neck Posture: set your recline to 100° to support a 0° neck tilt while computing.
- How Headrests on Mid-Back Chairs Can Distort Posture: in the pursuit of comfort, these psychological gimmicks can do more harm than good.
Modern Multi-Device Computing Standards
Modern computing standards call for multi-device support for the back and neck. To address skyrocketing sedentary habits, modern workstations must also provide more opportunities to move.
These factors come from the most recent edition of the Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics. This section expands on those points by looking into Technostress, Text Neck Syndrome, and other modern, tech-related working diseases.
- Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics 5th edition (2021): every decade, this textbook documents the latest institutional workplace design standards. Its latest update demands multi-device support plus sedentary computing solutions.
- Text Neck Syndrome: most people text with a severe forward head tilt. Check out the most common symptoms and solutions circa 2022.
- Technostress (Physical And Mental Computing Disease): the 4th Industrial Revolution seeks to merge humans with machines. To achieve this, physical and mental problems caused by tech overexposure must be addressed.
- Ergonomic Arm Support Prototypes For Mobile Users: healthy mobile usage biomechanics are well-documented. This article cites the research and lists several early prototypes that fill mobile computing support needs.
Most of the above articles list similar symptoms. Extended desktop and mobile computing curls the spine into a slouch.
That pulls the entire musculoskeletal system out of alignment, leading to a predictable series of problems:
Work From Home (WFH) Fundamentals
Combined, all listed articles are to help users enjoy healthy, productive desk work. All of our testing and research takes place in a home office.
As a result, this section ties all trends, best practices, and biomechanics together for the work-from-home crowd.
Learn what to avoid and the best practices to adhere to as you build your ultimate WFH productivity powerhouse.
- Survey Shows Urgent Need For HR To Equip & Educate WFH Staff: companies must provide work-from-home staff with the right equipment to ensure a safe home working environment.
- Ultimate WFH Ergonomic Criteria: back and neck support; movement; full-back chair deep recline functionality; healthy lifestyles.
- Ultimate WFH Setup Guide For Ergonomic Beginners: basic and advanced WFH fundamentals for first-time ergonomic furniture users.
- 2022 Deskwork Priorities: Fitness + Posture Beats Technostress: reframing the pro esports model for home desk workers. Use a good ergonomic setup, proper usage, and a robust fitness routine to supercharge wellness and productivity.
- Why You Need A Sit-Stand Desk in 2022: these support multi-device ergonomics for sitting, standing, and mobile computing. They also address sedentary harm by forcing healthy squatting postures throughout a workday.
- Quiet Quitter Burnout Fix = Physical + Cognitive Ergonomics: a permanent switch to WFH would solve ‘quiet quitting’ burnout among corporate employees forever.
Socio-Economic Ergonomic Trends
With a firm grasp of ergonomic fundamentals, the evolution of the ergonomic seating industry reads like an episodic adventure. Historically, see how seating trends evolved in sync with technological ones.
On an industrial level, B2B vs B2C (consumer) chair sales models have flipped. As WFH becomes predominant, the latter is emerging as the shining star of this era.
Ergonomic Seating History
The steam engine turned millions of farmers into desk jockeys. A century later, personal computers forced long periods of sitting that demanded ergonomic solutions.
Then, when the pro esports craze kicked off in the early 2000s, gaming chairs tagged along for the ride.
- History of Gaming Chairs (2006-2022): a global economic crisis sparked the rise of esports. Gaming chairs piggybacked to quickly rise from obscurity into the mainstream.
- History of Ergonomic Chairs (1904-2022): see how seating evolved to address tech-driven changes. As the typewriter gave way to the desktop PC in the early 1990s, ergonomic seating arose to address musculoskeletal problems.
- Ergonomic Illiteracy in American Classrooms (1635-2021): a tour through school seating standards that barely evolved in 400+ years!
Just for fun, we also put together a history of seating in American schools (from 1635 to 2021).
Based on the Rise and Fall of American Posture, it explains why pioneer-era seating still exists in modern American public schools.
Gaming/Office Furniture Industry Reports
The top-5 office industry brands generate several billion a year in revenue. In comparison, the gaming chair industry generates a few hundred million.
Despite the size discrepancy, both are now in a fierce battle for work-from-home dominance.
How did a tiny upstart fringe industry gain such a foothold? These articles tell the whole story.
- Why Gaming Chairs Are So Expensive In 2022: skyrocketing shipping and materials costs + inflation.
- Gaming Chair Industry Report 2022: market slump; strong office chair industry competition; Secretlab ranks #1.
- Office Chair Industry Report 2022: MillerKnoll rises to dominance; Steelcase falls back.
- Gaming and Office Chair Industry Report 2021: as gaming chairs crush B2C sales, big B2B office chair brands rush into the market.
- Lockdown Gaming & Office Industry Trends: when the world locked down, B2B gaming chair sales skyrocketed. Meanwhile, commercial office furniture sales crashed hard.
- Gaming Chair Industry Report 2020: pandemic lockdowns plus sophisticated e-commerce systems catapult gaming chairs into the mainstream.
- Office Chair Industry Report 2020: the multi-billion-dollar office chair industry flatlined during pandemic lockdowns. Focused on B2B sales for decades, most top brands were unprepared for the WFH era.
Goal: DIY Muscle Memory Posture Fixes
Many people adopt poor posture habits because they don’t know any better. Buying ergonomic furniture will force you to become more aware of your body’s mechanics. Many studies show that when given viable targets, people can fix their posture problems in-house.
First, you’ll need a good ergonomic chair. Then you’ll have to use it correctly. As you transition to improved posture, you’ll have to face — and overcome — deep-rooted habits.
That makes muscle memory the final outcome of any ergonomic investment. With the right tools and the right targets, you’ll need 2-3 disciplined full-time days to reset your habits. By day 5, they should be running subconsciously on auto-pilot!
