Tell us about yourself and your work: what you’re passionate about, what inspires you, and where you’re going. I focus on responsive, future-friendly, front-end design and development. This means I design and code websites that flex and adapt to the device the user is viewing them on. Progressive enhancement ensures that users visiting a site from their phone on a congested mobile network aren’t forced to download the same site assets they would see on their 30″ display at the office. Future-friendly development means writing flexible, modular code structure that is mindful of what’s next in tech.

I’m inspired by quality craft, regardless of medium. It is endearing to witness a maker who is good at what he or she is making. I’m also inspired by my city and the people who call it home. Winnipeg has an incredibly rich arts and cultural scene, especially for a city of relatively small size. In the past few years our downtown has seen some really cool architectural installations, like a huge steel/LED sculpture called “Emptyful” that’s shaped like an Erlenmeyer flask, and OMS Stage, an open-air performing arts venue that looks like it’s straight out of a science-fiction movie. When the rivers freeze in the winter, we clear the longest skating trail in the world and line it with warming huts designed in an annual architectural competition. I think there’s something to be said for the resilience and outward thinking this city embraces.

Tell us about your space. What’s your aesthetic? What do you like or dislike? My space is a bit of an audio playground, with instruments and recording gear and a life-size cardboard cutout of Raj Koothrappali from the TV show ”Big Bang Theory” (he’s camera shy). I have a flawless Fender Rhodes piano that was built in March of 1972, and will forever be the coolest thing I own.

The studio monitors on my desk sit on foam/steel wedges that isolate the speaker vibrations from my work surface. These are my go-to for listening to most music, but if I’m listening to a concert recording I’ll also bring up the mono speaker stack for a different timbre. If I’m listening to something with poor quality sound, I’ll route the audio through an old GE stereo I modded a few years ago that can plug directly into my mixer. This is kind of like the aural equivalent of taking a mediocre picture of your feet with Instagram and applying a filter to make it “better.”

The big white pillow things on my walls are broadband absorbers that help eliminate sound reflections and frequency nodes. Each panel is 4″ of rigid fiberglass insulation and an open wood frame that is wrapped in fabric and hung with picture frame wire.

My window treatment (if I can even call it that) is several layers of translucent plastic tablecloth, held in place with binder clips and magnets. It turns my basement window well into a big softbox. When rabbits hop in the garden above it’s like a shadow puppet show without the puppets.

I’m constantly exploring ergonomics, and love finding new ways to make working better. Currently my wrists rest on a water-damaged piece of hardboard from an old drawer. This sits atop a stack of dollar-store craft foam that raises the leading edge of my keyboard and trackpad so they parallel my desk. I think most people have increased fidelity in their fingers and thumbs with their wrists either parallel to their desks or relaxed forward, instead of pulled back as most keyboard designs imply. This is in part why pianists are trained not to drop their wrists while playing.

My display sits on a 3″ roll of black duct tape, the underside of which is covered by parchment paper. Parchment paper has a low coefficient of friction, so slides around my glass desk with ease.

If I could change anything about my current setup, I definitely wouldn’t be working on a black glass desk. It is an incredible pain to keep clean. I’d like to try a sit-stand desk with a wood surface and motorized legs.

You have both an Embody and an Aeron in your space. Why did you choose them, and how do they differ for you? I like them both, and they are very different. I typically start the work day in the Aeron because I love its forward tilt. It arches my back and keeps my body in attentive posture, which helps me kick-start productivity if I stayed up too late writing code or playing hockey. The Embody feels more relaxed to me, and I’m most comfortable in it slightly reclined. I usually tackle less intensive tasks in the Embody, like long-form reading or answering email. The Embody’s arm rests adjust closer to my body than the Aeron’s, which I find helpful in reducing shoulder strain.

It may seem excessive to have two high-end chairs in such close proximity, but an investment in design and comfort is easily justifiable to someone who spends as much time at a desk as I do.

Photos: Brad Cerasani

For the past few weeks Susan Lyons, our Materials Creative Director, has covered Herman Miller’s five material design principles over on our Discover blog. We’ve heard about honesty, utility, economy, pleasure, and possibility and the role these principles play in helping us choose the materials for our designs.

One principle is particularly relevant to Lifework readers: It’s the idea of utility. Lyons talks about utility in connection to Embody – a chair that finds its way into many a home office. “When we talk about material utility,” Lyons says, “what we really mean is that we use materials to solve problems.”

To hear Lyons talk about the rest of the principles simply follow these links: honesty, economy, pleasure, possibility.

To find a home office chair check out our tips on how to choose the right one for you. (And FYI – we’re now shipping our most popular office chairs for $29. Read all about that here.)

Clockwise from top left: Aeron, SAYL, Mirra, Embody

And of course, it needed to look good. It’s part of your home and for a lot of us who aren’t lucky enough to have dedicated home office this chair will be in public view. So what’s the answer. I recently got an Aeron chair and have never been so happy. It ticks the ergonomics box and looks great in our hard working office/family room/guest bedroom. The nice news for Lifework readers is Herman Miller is now shipping Aeron, Embody, SAYL, Mirra and Setu for just $29. Welcome to 2012!

Today Gretchen Gscheidle, Director of Insight and Exploration, for Herman Miller, who helped Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber develop products including the Aeron and Embody, continues our research into ergonomics. Gscheidle, who trained as an industrial designer and product developer, is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and represents Herman Miller on the Office Ergonomics Research Committee. She knows a thing or two about sitting.

Clockwise from top left: Aeron, SAYL, Mirra, Embody

1. How do you choose an ergonomically-correct chair? Should you match the chair to the kind of back problem you may have? There are 3 rules in ergonomics, seating and otherwise: fit the user, fit the task, allow postural change and movement. The fitting depends on your body – size, shape, proportions. I for one have a long torso, short arms, so I’m extra focused on armrest height.

You must sit in the chair. If you have chronic issues or even temporary discomforts, yes, you’re going to gravitate toward those chairs that deliver the support where you need it. Fitting also requires “tuning” the chair’s adjustments. There’s often an “ah-ha” when you know everything just feels “right.”

There are plenty of pre-conceptions about what that should be. I encourage people to approach seating with an open mind – there are some amazing technologies in seating – and get some expert advice in the process.

Then you also have to take into consideration what tasks you’re going to be doing in the chair. Reclining is healthy for the back in that it offloads the weight of the upper back onto the chair – but you can’t do that if you’re sitting on an exercise ball, as some people choose to at work. Conversely, if you’re looking through a microscope or needing to look down at your hands as you’re sorting materials, reclining doesn’t do you much good there.

Finally, you need to keep moving so you don’t want to be locked into one posture the way that, say a race car driver is in a custom-molded seat.

2. You’ve used pressure map technology to help develop better chairs for Herman Miller. Can you tell us how that technology works? We use very thin, pressure-sensitive “blankets”, that aren’t much thicker than a bed sheet. They are draped over the seat or backrest of a chair while connected to a computer and the associated software. When a person sits down on the mat, a pressure pattern appears on screen. It is a dynamic process, so there’s a “movie” that is captured, or you can review individual frames.

The pattern changes depending on who is sitting in the chair, what they’re sitting on, and how they’re sitting. Like on a weather map, the colors in the map indicate intensity. When reading the map, you’re looking for symmetry as well as more intense pressure to be in some places, like under the sitting bones of the pelvis, and less pressure in other places like behind the knee. Beyond that, you’re taking into consideration the sitter, the sitter’s posture and construction of the chair in interpreting where on the scale between “good” and “bad” a particular map falls. It’s why we consider the exercise as much “art” as “science.” Believe it or not, Aeron and SAYL would be fairly indistinguishable in a pressure map.

Above: Three different pressure maps; on the left, a slight imbalance in pressure, inclusive of the suggestion of a wallet in the back pocket; middle intense pressure under the sitting bones, suggesting a very firm seat; right, more uniform pressure across the seat, but still a suggestion of more pressure where you do want it – under the sitting bones.

3. Tell us about the importance of blood and oxygen when it comes to sitting. There has been a bit of talk lately about standing desks but that must have ergonomic hazards as well? Well, cells need oxygen, transported by blood, to burn energy – metabolize – and stay healthy. Blood also carries carbon dioxide – waste from the body’s burned energy – out of the cells. The effectiveness of this process is facilitated through tissue perfusion, a measure of the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide within the body’s tissues. It’s the basis for keeping individual cells and ultimately human beings alive.

Compressed soft tissue reduces blood flow and thus tissue perfusion. Over time static loads on soft tissues trigger the body’s natural defense mechanism. The discomfort that is experienced results in fidgeting or macro movements like the feeling of, “I’ve got to get up.” Both extremes allow blood to circulate again and health to be restored. In individuals with compromised nervous systems that discomfort is not felt and therefore the body is very vulnerable to serious issues because the cells die from a lack of oxygen.

As for standing desks, it is a function of conditioning – if you aren’t accustomed to being on your feet, you’re going to lean and offload your body weight elsewhere. And, it’s also a question again of tasks. Can you stand for the tasks that you’re needing to accomplish? Sit-to-stand desks are a nice solution because at times you can stand, others you can sit – forward, upright, or reclined – assuming your chair has that range of accommodation.

4. What do you sit in when you’re working? It depends. I’m a mobile worker, so it depends on where I’m at, and what’s waiting for me there. In my home office, I sit in a prototype Embody chair.

Over at our sister blog, Discover, there’s a great post on the science of sitting. As it turns out it’s a lot to do with blood flow to your bottom! Which I guess makes sense. Gretchen Gscheidle, who wrote the post and is a scientist and artist, has worked with Herman Miller on perfecting their designs for decades. She was reacting to a study published in the Chicago Tribune that found the “sitting too much could be deadly”. Don’t you love a newspaper headline? In the 1990s Gretchen began using pressure map technology, “which visualizes what the seat and sitter interface looks like—and how it changes depending on seat construction and the posture of the sitter. These changes translate to comfort or discomfort for the user.” It all sounds rather technical but the results have given us super comfortable chairs like Embody.

For Embody Gretchen commissioned researchers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Milwaukee’s Marquette University, to measure “the amount of oxygen in the blood flowing to and from subjects’ lower extremities and heart rate–key health measures. It turns out, both improved when users sat in the Embody chair, versus other chairs, doing the same seated tasks in both.”

So, it is OK to sit. Thank goodness. Although, it’s also probably a good idea to get up off that chair – at least once or twice a day. After all, you’ve got to eat lunch after all.

[The photo of the Embody chair above is from se7enthirty's review]