Monday, November 22, 2010

How to not become a laptop hunchback - Ergonomic Solution


Laptops are making us hunchbacks :(
It seems very obvious that laptops are not ergonomically friendly. We are all, finally, becoming ergonomically aware and yet we still succumb to laptops in all their hunching inducing glory. This is not okay. We can sit it the most suitably designed, ergonomic (designer even) chair, but as our hands are at our waist, if our heads are there too, it’s just not gonna help.

So, a seedling of a solution? Put a neck on the thing! Of all of our crazy technological advancements I’m proposing something that may actually move us back a bit – literally ;)
The screen of a laptop, either, needs to be a separate piece from the keyboard, or, it needs to have a neck that extends the screen up. For proper posture, the tip of your nose should hit the middle of your screen (if for some reason it was that close to your face, in which case I don’t want to know why that would be...).

If it was a separate piece it should have little feet to stand on so you could place it where you need to - like on a stack of books or something like that. And if the feet actually looked like feet, well, that would just be awesome. 

It seems absolutely crazy to me that this is not an issue. I’ve discussed this silliness with others and they agree with the decline of posture. I know our heads are fuller with immense amounts of information, but ummm, it doesn’t actually weigh anything - tangibly speaking. So pick it up and straighten out. And spread the word so we can encourage the development of a truly valuable consumer product innovation. I mean, those are pretty hard to come by!