Awesome Stuff: Stand While You Work

Innovation

from the it's-good-for-you dept

As some folks know, I’m a pretty big believer in standing while you work rather than sitting. It takes a little while to get used to, but these days I greatly prefer standing. While the first few weeks are a bit difficult on your legs and (especially) feet, once you get used to it, it’s pretty easy. There’s definitely been a trend in sit-stand setups lately, so for this week’s awesome stuff post, I thought we’d look at three new crowdfunding projects concerning standing desks.

• First up, is a the StandDesk — which is a standard sit/stand alternating desk. There are lots of these on the market, though they can get a bit pricey. StandDesk’s sole claim to fame seems to be that it’s a lot cheaper than the competition — which is true. It’s an automated sit-stand desk going for about $400 (not including shipping). Standard automated sit-stand desks tend to be closer to $1,000 or more. When I switched to a sit-stand setup a couple years ago, I deliberately didn’t buy such a desk, because it seemed too expensive. Instead, I retrofitted an existing desk with one of these. But the StandDesk definitely brings the price down. It appears people are pretty excited about this cheaper sit-stand desk as it’s already raised over $350,000 (much more than its $50,000 target) with nearly a month left to go.
• I’m always intrigued by people trying something new and different, so the ChairBot certainly caught my eye. It’s an attempt to still let people get the best of both sitting and standing, while minimizing the harms. I have no idea if there’s any real science behind it, but the idea appears to be to have the chair set at your standing height, and the chair splits in two, with either side going down to remove support from one leg or the other. The end result is that you end up “standing” with one leg while “sitting” with the other. And the ChairBot has a timer, so that every so often, you’re prompted to switch. The theory is that you get the better posture associated with standing, but not the fatigue that often comes with it (though, again, I’ve found that goes away after a short adjustment period). You kind of have to watch the video to understand how this works: While new and different ideas may be interesting, that doesn’t mean they’re compelling. And this one definitely falls into the not-very-compelling camp. Especially at the insane price of $2,700 (which is apparently the “early bird” price before it goes to $3,700!). You’d have to (1) really, really believe that this is a better system (2) have extra money to throw away and (3) trust that this device that you haven’t tested would really work for you in order to plunk down that kind of money. So, it’s little surprise that almost no one has actually done so. As I write this, only 1 person has signed up, so it seems unlikely that this project will come anywhere near the $100,000 it seeks by the project completion in two weeks.
• Finally, many people point out that you don’t need a fancy contraption to have a standing desk. You can just pile some boxes or a shelf on an existing desk and get basically the same thing. So it’s interesting to see someone trying to offer a collapsible desktop riser for exactly that purpose. Of course, I’m confused why this is a Kickstarter project, as there are tons of similar desktop risers on the market, and this doesn’t appear to be new or unique in any significant way. Nor does it appear the creator put much effort at all into the campaign. It’s one of the rare Kickstarter campaigns that doesn’t even have a video. Given that, it’s not too surprising that so almost no one seems to be interested in buying one (there’s just one backer).

That’s it for this week. Stand up and stretch.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, sit-stand desk, standing