NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY

For the state-of-the-art graduate facility, NDU sought world-class ergonomic solutions.

NDU SEEKS HEALTH & COMFORT

National Defense University (NDU), the premier center for Joint Professional Military Education, was in the process of constructing a new graduate academic facility. The task at hand was to find solutions to promote the health and safety of NDU students and employees. The head of the project, Director of Engineering Stephen Hatch, chose to outfit the classrooms and administrative offices of the new facility with high-performance ergonomic products.

“We really wanted to make the best use of the new space,” Hatch said. “We wanted products that were high quality, durable and easy to use, without a lot of maintenance.”

To fulfill NDU’s classroom needs, Hatch sought a task chair that could accommodate a wide range of users who were constantly coming and going. Since the average age of an NDU graduate student is 42, Hatch’s ideal task chair needed to provide comfort for users with a variety of physical needs for varying lengths of time, from hour-long meetings to all-day class sessions. To outfit the offices, Hatch’s charge was to find ergonomic work tools that would please a majority of NDU employees. Therefore, he had to determine which were the best task chairs and ergo tools on the market—and more importantly, which were the best for NDU.

A TWO-YEAR SEARCH FOR A SOLUTION

Step One: Developing Methodology

Drawing on his engineering background, Hatch conducted his own research and testing to find the best products for NDU’s new facility. However, he found much of the existing research on ergonomics to be too wordy and written from an academic standpoint rather than a functional, engineering one. A more practical method was required.

Step Two: Testing

To choose the best task seating for NDU’s classrooms, Hatch rotated chairs from several contract furniture manufacturers among a group of experienced testers. His evaluation system was simple and practical, and he had each tester evaluate each chair so that he could compare their scores relatively and consistently.

To test the office ergo tools, NDU mocked up a number of full offices with products from several leading contract furniture companies. Some offices were completely outfitted with products from a particular manufacturer, others were mixed-and-matched, and some contained no ergo tools at all. Again, a group of testers rotated among the test offices and reported their experiences with each product.

After more than two years’ worth of tests, Hatch was left with a collection of data that pointed to the consensus “best choice” for task seating and ergonomic office tools.

HUMANSCALE RISES TO THE TOP

After analyzing the test results, Hatch determined that Humanscale’s complete office solution outperformed all others while also meeting NDU’s allotted budget.

Based on his results, NDU outfitted its new classrooms with more than 1,800 of Humanscale's Freedom chairs. Hatch cited Freedom’s comfort, quality, intuitive adjustments and modern aesthetics as particularly attractive, adding that “easy adjustment was huge.” The feedback from NDU students and guests was almost unanimously positive, as Freedom received glowing compliments for its comfort, styling and unique, synchronous arms.

For its new offices, NDU purchased 352 M7 monitor arms, 352 5G keyboard supports and 500 FM500 Foot Machines. Hatch described Humanscale’s ergonomic tools as “supremely well made products—better than anything else out there.” Sometimes viewed as superfluous or unnecessary to the complete ergonomic solution, even the footrests were universally applauded, according to Hatch.

Wanting to make the best use of NDU’s new space, Hatch had overwhelmingly positive praise for Humanscale’s ergonomic solutions: “When it comes to the complete system, Humanscale is in a class by itself.”