Humanscale has won a coveted Red Dot award for its Diffrient World Chair as the Best of the Best in the Office Furniture category, awarded to a single product in a broad product class this is a great achievement.

It is almost exclusively self adjusting and apart from setting the height users can leave it all up to the chair to work out the most comfortable and supportive position to place you in.

All this has been achieved by using just 8 major components with the chair actually functioning without a mechanism and incorporating form-sensing mesh upholstery for perfect back and lumbar support removing the need for manually adjustable components.

The only downside is the chair still isn’t officially launched and doesn’t look like appearing until early summer 2010.

However, Diffrient World is only one of Humanscale’s award winning chairs and the good news it is running a promotion on all its products offering an additional 15% saving on current prices.

Follow these links for reviews and details on the savings on the Freedom chair and Saddle seat as well as the Liberty chair, which are all great products in their own rights.

Despite all the new advances in technology one of the key causes of neck pain when using an office chair doesn’t look like disappearing anytime soon.

Yes the humble telephone incorrectly used is capable of creating a lot of neck problems both now and in the future.

How does this happen? You see it all the time, people trying to take calls and write at the same time, what do they do? They wedge the phone between their ear and shoulder and contort their neck into a horribly unnatural position, this places excessive strain on the neck and shoulder muscles as well as the vertebrae in the neck.

Invariably people always take calls on the same side so they don’t even give their neck a chance to balance up the distortion this creates.

And the problem has got worse as mobiles are more commonplace and smaller than ever and so encourage this bad habit.

At least with a hard wired office phone it is quick and natural to switch to speakerphone and make writing notes and taking the call easier, although for confidentiality and annoying colleagues nearby in a large office this isn’t always practical.

Fortunately many modern mobiles let you take calls via a speaker and they nearly all come with a cheap earpiece and microphone so there really isn’t any excuse for sitting screwed up in your office chair cradling your phone and trying to take notes at the same time.

And if the supplied earpiece and mic are really poor replacing them with a better quality headset with built in microphone won’t cost you that much.

So, if you are a neck cradler when taking calls you need to break the habit and consciously become aware of when you are abusing your body like this. Fortunately if you do it frequently enough your body will tell you by inflicting a good dose of neck pain on you.

Break the habit now before you do any lasting damage and start running up chiropractor’s bills, for as the years go by you’ll be glad you did.

I’m often amazed at the casual attitude people take when buying a new office chair you see frequent posts and comments on Twitter and FaceBook about how they plan to call in at the local office warehouse on the way home to pick up a new office chair, treating it as though they needed some Corn Flakes for breakfast tomorrow.

OK if the chair is only for occasional use I guess it may not matter a whole lot and yet more often than not these people are full time desk chair users who desperately need something which will give them good support and comfort for the hours and hours they sit every day.

This laid back approach usually only results in disappointment within a few weeks as it quickly becomes apparent what they bought is actually a low quality seat, made to fit a price band so what seemed like a bargain quickly becomes an embarrassing liability.

So What Would Be a More Effective Way of Buying a New Office Seat?

It all begins with some research so check manufacturer’s web sites and find out if there is a local office seating specialist you can visit and discuss your requirements with friendly, knowledgeable people.

Good ones will be happy to give you an approval period after buying to return the chair if it proves unsuitable. Often they will loan you a chair to try for several days to make sure it’s right for you, because it really does take a few days to be sure.

Alternatively, find a good online store which has a good returns policy so you can be certain the chair is comfortable and supportive, the better ones will generally give you 30 days.

You will probably end up spending more via a chair specialist or online however you will quickly forget the extra cost as you appreciate the increased comfort and productivity it gives you. Here is a quick summary of quality chairs worth short listing.

If you are finding your office chair isn’t as comfortable as it used to be then maybe it’s time to take a quick look at some key adjustments, especially if you haven’t checked them recently.

Seat Height Adjustment

When your seat height isn’t set up correctly it can cause you a good deal of discomfort although it shouldn’t be necessary to change it once you have it set properly, sometimes it gets changed without you realizing it. Maybe someone else used your chair and altered the height, how annoying is that!

Using the paddle lever or button take the time to set your seat’s height so your feet are squarely on the floor with your thighs facing slightly downwards when sitting.

You never want to have your feet dangling in the air because it puts excessive pressure on the underside of you legs. If you are short built and find difficulty with this you may need to think about buying a footrest to correct it.

Seat Tilt tension

Hopefully your chair includes this adjustment, generally speaking it most commonly adjusts using a tension knob under the front of the chair. Turn it inwards to increase tension and outwards to decrease it.

When this is properly set up you should be able to recline with relative ease in your chair with the back moving easily as you lean back on it. If you find it’s difficult to do this or the back offers little or no resistance it’s definitely time to check your settings.

Back Height/Lumbar Support Adjustment

Your chair will probably have a height adjustable back unless it’s a high back model which may be fixed and yet hopefully includes some form of lumbar support adjustment.

Most back height adjustment is either by a knob at the rear of back support stem or it may have a ratchet adjuster where you need to reach behind you and slowly lift the back up and down into preset positions. This may also involve pressing buttons to do this.

Try and set the back or lumbar support so that it is giving you good lower back support as this will help prevent slouching as well as encouraging your back to adopt a healthier more upright position.

So, why not check these 3 simple adjustments now, you may well find comfort levels improve significantly as a result.

The February 2010 edition of Men’s Journal takes a look at 9 different office chair models:

• Herman Miller’s Embody
• Knoll’s Generation Chair
• Humanscale’s Freedom Chair
• Zody from Haworth
• HÅG Futu
• Steelcase Think Chair
• Evolution Ball Chair
• Kore Stool

Pick of the bunch not surprisingly was Miller’s Embody chair scoring a near maximum whereas the least favored was the Kore Stool mainly because it requires the user to balance on it which can be tiring after a time when muscles aren’t toned, mind you at little more than 10% of the cost of the winner maybe the result wasn’t so surprising.

Also the UK’s Financial Times weekend edition for 13 February 2010 carried an article on 4 top end models:

• Herman Miller’s Embody Chair
• Herman Miller’s Setu
• Steelcase Think Chair
• Humanscale’s Diffrient World Chair (not yet officially released)

With more and more senior managers spending part of their week working in their home office demand for better quality office seating appears to be on the rise.

HÅG of Norway is no longer producing its Peter Opsvik designed Balans kneeling chair which has been a part of its seating range for over 26 years.

Although it has never been a major product for them, it sold steadily over the years and was popular with people who find conventional chairs didn’t suit them. It was certainly amongst the best kneeling chairs particularly from a quality and design viewpoint.

If you had thought you might like to own one, fortunately it may still possible to get hold of one from ErgoDepot.com who still has a few available.

If you would like to understand more about this specialist seat, here’s where you can find a review of the HÅG Balans chair.

Most people are aware of memory foam, and have probably read about it or may even use it in a bed mattress. Over the past few years, some seating manufacturers have begun using it in office chair foams and I don’t think this is a good idea.

Why? Well, the basic principle of memory foam is your weight compresses the foam and allows it to mold to the shape of your body so you are cushioned where you need it – nothing wrong with that.

However, it’s different with office chairs because we weren’t designed to sit for hours on end, so we move around in the chair because our body maybe sends a signal highlighting our back is uncomfortable and needs to change position.

In the meantime, the memory foam has molded to your initial position and then you move, as a result your body weight distribution changes so the foam needs to decompress and recompress to a new position, and that takes time because memory foam has a real slow reaction time as it slowly readjusts to your new posture.

With modern high-quality polyurethane foams not only is the response time far quicker, it also gives excellent, comfortable support as well meaning as you change so does it by reacting rapidly without loss of support. What’s more it won’t flatten with repeated use always maintaining its original shape.

It’s for this reason I suggest you avoid memory foam in office chairs and stick with high quality polyurethane filled seat pads and backs which are the standard with most quality manufacturers.

Whilst we would all like to think that corporations supply employees with quality chairs, like an Aeron or Freedom Chair, the reality is that there are still an awful lot of employers out there who supply staff with lousy office chairs, buying on price with little thought for user comfort.

So if this is you, chances are you are already spending six to eight hours each working day sitting in discomfort with inadequate support, which is not good. Now maybe when you get home, you spend a few more hours at the computer surfing online or working at an online business to escape working for the man.

Well, after the pounding your body has taken at work all day, the last thing it needs is to be given more of the same when you get home. So if you’re sitting in a dining chair or on a breakfast stool or in a cheap office chair, you really ought to think about giving your body a break.

By treating yourself to a new quality office chair, you will find it a pleasure to sit in after that back-breaker at work, and it may even motivate you to work harder on that online business too so you can sit in it even more. Here is a quick summary of some ergonomic office chairs worth considering.

If you ever try buying an office chair online it can be a really overwhelming experience, depending on how you go about it here are some of the things you may find.

You visit a site selling office chairs and you are presented with a scrolling page filled with 100 different chair images and they are all shouting “Buy Me! Buy Me!” and when you get to the bottom of the page it says page 1 of 4 meaning there are 400 to choose from, just how are you supposed to make an informed choice?

Maybe you decide to try Twitter for help, surely there must be someone there who can advise you? Well yes and no, these days there are a ton of spammy tweets from suppliers carpet bombing the same message nearly every time,  hardly fills you with confidence does it?

Add to that the shed load of fake reviews through multiple Twitter accounts sure the headlines sound good – “Why You Need An Ergonomic Office Chair” so you click in hope and what do you find? Well after you wade through the AdSense ads you get to a review where the English seems like it was translated from the original Portuguese by someone whose first language clearly isn’t English and so you end up baling out after the first paragraph.

What about an auction site like eBay, although there are undoubtedly bargains to be had it also is not without its problems. First there is the logistics of getting the chair from one side of the country to the other in one piece should you win it.

Second you can’t be sure of the condition it is in, often the image on the auction is from the manufacturer’s website and even when it is a shot of the actual item photos tend to make things look better than they are in real life, it may be immaculate or it may have 200,000 miles on the clock you won’t truly know until it’s on your doorstep.

One of the most abused words these days is “Ergonomic” especially when used to describe an office chair and the reason is there is no clear definition of what it means, it’s little more than a concept a convenient term for implied quality. It is frequently used by suppliers to enhance often poor quality seating, making it more difficult for genuine products to be heard. Here’s my take on what makes an office chair ergonomic.

So what should you do to find the right chair for you?

I believe there are 5 key features you have to have on an office chair if you insist on these it will narrow the choice down considerably.

Unless you’re an occasional user $100 chairs aren’t the answer, at this price there are just too many components which will be a compromise on quality to keep the cost down, you need to be starting around the $350 level and even then you may not get all the features you need.

Sites like Amazon.com and the better online seating stores have user reviews and this is a great way to gauge an idea of how good something is, however remember office seating is a very personal choice so what may be great for someone else may not work as well for you. For this reason it’s best to choose a site with a rock solid 30 day return policy, this way you get a good opportunity to really test it out to see if it’s right for you.

Lastly, you could always take a look at my office chair reviews section which has a quick summary with links to the full reviews of some of the better quality chairs available.

Although most manufacturers tend to make their chairs with generous sized seats, if you are very tall and or well built you may find your chair is cramped in the length or width leaving you feeling wedged into it.

This makes it very difficult to get comfortable as it restricts your movements and so consequently you can end up sitting in a very rigid way which is bad news for your posture and muscles.

Fortunately, the answer is pretty simple to fix because just as certain manufacturers realized the need to make below average seat sizes for petite users, a number also produce larger than average sizes.

Frequently these are referred to as Big and Tall chairs which is a good thing as it alerts potential buyers who they are best suited for.

A word of caution though, just because a chair is referred to as big and tall by no means makes it a good chair, it’s just a name with no guaranteed level of quality.

Here are some ideas for quality built big and tall chairs from specialist manufacturers.

First, Neutral Posture really understands the sort of chair needed by well built and or tall users and its NP6000 and NP8000 ranges are well worth a look. You could also consider an Aeron it comes in 3 sizes and likely a size C will be best, you can check here on the size chart, the new Embody is another potential answer. BodyBilt is yet another manufacturer to check out