Design of the Future Workstation: Enhancing Health and Wellbeing on the Job

Abstract

Sedentary behavior (i.e., waking behaviors in the seated/lying position at low energy expenditure), or sitting, has emerged as a potential risk factor for numerous chronic diseases and all-cause mortality during the last decade. Working adults accumulate large number of sitting hours at work and interventions have been developed to reduce sitting in the workplace. An interdisciplinary university research team was created to develop new designs for instrumented sit-stand workstations: embedded sensors that will be used to assess postural stability, sit-to-stand efficiency, as well as to facilitate “in-the-moment” prompts to increase standing behaviors. These features will be used for real-time, as well as summative feedback. Feedback techniques will include unobtrusive displays, light-modulation, and on-demand auditory feedback. The evaluation will include assessing the short-term and long-term effectiveness of the instrumented sit-stand workstations for objectively-measured workplace sitting, cardio-metabolic risk biomarkers, and work productivity.