Kurt's Thoughts

My friend works at Herman Miller and for my birthday he bought me the latest chair that they’ve made for professional workers that specifically sit in front of computers a lot:

INTRODUCING THE “EMBODY”.
(I can’t help it.  I gotta pitch this thing. 
It’s REALLY FRICKIN’ COMFORTABLE.)

I’ve sat in a lot of office chairs – particularly the Aeron which was Herman Miller’s design that was all the rage during the Internet boom of the late 90’s.  Dotcom start ups bought these by the hundreds of thousands to populate and furnish their new dotcom workspaces. 

Yes, the Aeron was comfortable, what with it’s mesh based fabric & it’s back shaped structure… it was practically designed for the uber-computer user.

FLAWS IN THE ORIGINAL AERON:
But there were always few things the bugs the crap out of me about the Aeron:

1. STIFF.  The back felt stiff even with the mesh fiber.  The fiber would bend and flex to your backs contours but it really had different amounts of pressure along your back and thus you felt more comfortable in some areas than others.
2. LACK OF ELBOW ROOM.  The fact was that your elbows were stuck either in front of your body on the arm rests, or directly at your side.  Everyone knows that when you stick your chest out to stretch, your elbows need to be behind your body.  No can do on the Aeron.
3. THIGH SUPPORT.  Weird as this sounds, on some chairs my thighs would ‘hang over’ the end of the chair.  On others, the seat would be too big and I’d have to ‘scoot’ forward which is not ergonomic.

THE EMBODY “DESIGN CHANGES”
It’s clear that they put some though into fixing the Aeron’s issues in the new Embody.  The Embody inherits all of the features I loved about the Aeron like the breathable mess fiber covering, the adjustability of every typical aspect of the chair, the smoothness of the swivel, etc.  But they also specifically corrected the above issues:

1. FLEXIBLE BACKBONE.  This is the weird part that’s fascinating.  The chair actually has a “backbone” that flexes with your back’s shape.  No longer are you dependent on the mesh to flex to the contours of your back.  That still happens but now the back of the chair actually has joints that adjust to your back as well.  We have some really crappy chairs at work and this one is so comfortable, I may ask my friend to order me another on my dime just so that I have one at home and at work for this feature alone.
2. THIN BACK, OPEN ELBOWS.  The back is much thinner allowing one’s elbows to poke out on the sides.  This is a very natural feel that doesn’t make your chest feel cramped or your elbows feel confined.  There’s a lot more freedom in the way your body fits the chair.
3. EXPANDABLE BASE.  The chair’s seat literally can be elongated outward so that more of your thighs are supported by the base.  This disperses more of your weight across a larger surface area lessening the pressure on any one part of your body.

Like most professional office furniture, this isn’t cheap.  But it’s definitely far an above anything I’ve sat in.  I’m sitting in it right now wishing I had one for my office and the baby’s room.  I could probably rock our son to sleep every night in this.

• LINK:  Herman Miller “Embody” Chair
  http://embody.hermanmiller.com/