In the last post, we established that there are some really strong benefits to using good ergonomic products.  In fact, there are several large, well designed, long-term studies that demonstrate the benefit of using Natural split keyboards in terms of reducing pain over time and preventing injury.  Since properly designed ergonomic mice and keyboards are measurably better over time, it makes sense that you might wonder why we all haven’t started using them.

In my experience, there are three types of issues that prevent ergo products from being used by everyone:  awareness, difficulty in perceiving benefits, and cost concerns.

Awareness

The awareness piece is pretty obvious.  Ergonomic products aren’t carried as frequently as standard products, so you’re less likely to find them at the local store.  That means that we, the manufacturers, have a challenge to raise awareness and educate about ergonomic benefits.  It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing: if customers don’t see products, they don’t buy them.  If people aren’t buying ergonomic products, stores are less likely to carry them.   This can be a tough hurdle.   Some of my work involves raising awareness, and I’m hoping that these blog posts will help out.

Perceiving the benefits

Once people become aware of ergonomic products, the next challenge is convincing them that there’s actually a benefit to using them.  There are some interesting human perceptual things going on that make it hard for people to notice what ergonomic products are doing for them.  The first issue is the difference between short-term comfort and long-term comfort.  The basic idea here is that it’s hard to tell how comfortable something will be a month from now when you only have a few minutes to try it in the store.  Most people can relate to sitting in a chair that felt fine at first, but got progressively more uncomfortable over the course of the day.  Similarly, if two keyboards feel similar in the store, you wouldn’t expect there to be a big difference over time.  But, the studies show that there can indeed be a big difference.

Back to the awareness piece, this means that we, the manufacturers need to have credibility for people to believe in long-term benefits if they can’t feel them themselves during a trip to the store.   My approach is to back up our claims with well-designed studies, let people know that I’m here in Microsoft’s labs working on these things, and, most importantly, to make sure that the ergonomic products we make deliver an excellent experience.  Good products speak for themselves.  That’s the best way to get good reviews, encourage people to become repeat customers, and provide some word-of-mouth awareness.

Another reason that people can’t quickly perceive the benefit of ergonomic products is that it is much easier to feel discomfort than it is to feel comfort.   If you’re used to a certain type of product – you’re not likely to notice how uncomfortable it is.  Conversely, if you’re used to the comfort of a good ergonomic product, you can more easily feel how uncomfortable a traditionally designed product is by comparison.  It’s a barrier at first , however  people who switch to ergonomic mice and keyboards tend to stick with them because they can quickly feel how uncomfortable traditional products are by comparison.

[Image: Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000]

The costs

The final barrier to people adapting ergonomic products is the perceived cost of using them.  Of these, the first big concern is usually about learning curve.  It’s usually something along the lines of “That seems hard to use, I don’t want to re-learn how to _________ [type, mouse, etc.].”   There often is a learning curve associated with new products, but it’s not as big as you might think.  For Natural keyboards, we’ve found that people adjust to them in two weeks on average. It depends somewhat on your typing style.   If you’re a touch-typist, you’re likely to adjust faster.  If your fingers cross over the centerline of the keyboard while typing, it’s going to take you a bit longer to adjust (because crossing over the split in the keyboard will be more difficult on a split, and you’ll have to unlearn this behavior).   For Natural mice, there isn’t a learning curve.  People can point just as quickly as with a traditional mouse immediately.  However, the Natural mouse does feel a bit strange in the hand for roughly 3 days as you get used to the new posture.

Another practical barrier includes the fact that ergonomic products tend to be a little more expensive than traditional products (again, often due to the lower sales rates).   Microsoft’s ergonomic products are not our cheapest products.  But, they’re not our most expensive either.   So, what can I say?  The data on the benefits of our ergonomic products speaks for itself.  Everyone has to make up their own minds about what they’re willing to spend for comfortable mice and keyboards.

Wrap up

People have concerns about costs that you may have to pay now for ergonomic benefits that you receive over the long term creates inertia against switching to ergonomic products.   The attitude is something along the lines of “I feel fine today, so why should I worry about it?”  The answer is that there’s a lot to potentially lose and relatively low cost if you look at it over the long-term.   The transition period is very short when you consider that you’re going to be using a computer for your whole life.

If you have a story about pain at the computer, or if you have a story about a product that has helped you, I’d love to hear from you.   That concludes my three-part blog series, but it won’t be my last post!

-Dr. Dan, Certified Professional Ergonomist

Rather than talk about it in the abstract, it’ll be more helpful to walk through some of the thinking behind an actual product – so I’ll talk through the design of the Natural mouse (pictured below).

When thinking about designing a new product with an ergonomic focus, the first thing to do is research to understand how the task is currently being completed and identify opportunities for improvement. Today, the mouse is actively used about three times as much as the keyboard. But mouse design hasn’t changed that much in response to the changing usage pattern. The Natural mouse was intended to address this need – make a mouse that is more comfortable to match the longer and more intense usage that we see today.

Once this need was highlighted, the next step was to do some research and target the opportunities we had to make mice more comfortable. When you look at how people commonly use mice, you often see something that looks like the photo below.

From a comfort standpoint, there are a couple of areas to improve upon. First of all, the wrist and fingers in this picture are in a non-neutral posture. ‘Neutral’ generally means near the center of the range of motion, though we referenced a lot of literature to pinpoint our specific target posture for the Natural mouse. The posture goal was to tilt the wrist up to roughly a 45 degree angle and maintain relaxed finger curl. Another non-postural benefit of rotating the hand more vertically is that it improves the contact area between the palm and the desk and takes the pressure off the sensitive carpal tunnel area right in the middle of your palm (see figures below).

Once the posture and performance targets were established, we went through a long process of brainstorming, prototyping, evaluating, and redesigning to come up with several mouse shapes that fit the objectives. We generated over 100 of these models in the search for the perfect shape.

The process of design, evaluation, and refinement left us with three different functional mouse concepts that we thought would meet our objectives. These models then went to the University of Washington for 3rd party ergonomics testing with more sophisticated equipment to make sure that we wound up with the best concept overall as well as quantifying its benefit. Verification studies run at a University are typical for our ergonomic products and are a requirement for our products to be stamped with our “Ergonomist Approved” label. I should add that we take a number of productivity, comfort, fatigue, and preference measures in addition to posture and other traditional ergonomics measures. As I mentioned in my last post, it’s important to take a holistic view in order to make the best overall product. After all this work, it’s just the start for engineering and manufacturing, which takes another several months before we can finally bring the new product to our customers.

So, that’s an example of how we approach ergonomic design at Microsoft. Next time I’ll write about barriers to ergonomic products. If you have a story about pain at the computer, or if you have a story about a product that has helped you, I’d love to hear from you.

Some of the recurring themes that came up were:  What exactly is ergonomics and why is it important?  What is Microsoft’s approach to ergonomic design?  And – what are the barriers to ergonomic products (why doesn’t everyone use them)?  That’s a lot of material.  So, I’m going to break this into three posts to address each one separately.

What exactly is ergonomics and why is it important?

There are a lot of misconceptions about ergonomics out there.  A common view seems to be something like “Oh, ergonomics, that’s what you need to deal with once you’ve been injured.”   The implication there is that ergonomics is a hassle, and you only worry about it when you really need to.  As an ergonomist – I have to say that it shouldn’t be that way.

In actuality, ergonomics is just a field of science that studies the way people work.  In Latin, ‘ergo’ means work, and ‘nomos’ means natural law.   So, ergonomics is the study of work principles.  Understanding how people work enables us to help people work better.  This doesn’t just mean ‘treat injuries’ – but encompasses all aspects of work: help people get more done, get more enjoyment out of their work, as well as stay healthy.  When something is properly ‘ergonomically designed,’ it should mean that the task or device matches the capabilities of the person.

Fortunately, a lot of work has already been done to make computer work productive and enjoyable.  So, as ergonomists, we do tend to focus more on the comfort piece.  But it’s when we forget the other pieces that ‘ergonomics’ gets a bad name.  I can’t tell you how many computer input devices I’ve seen where the designer states that their design is “ergonomic.”  Meanwhile I’m thinking to myself “yeah, but it takes twice as long to get your work done.  So, no one’s going to want to use it.”  That’s bad ergonomic design since it doesn’t consider the whole picture.

Now, let’s focus on why injury prevention in computer use is so important.  One of the main risk factors for injury is exposure time (repetition, frequency, duration, etc…).  Well, you won’t be surprised when I tell you that people spend a lot of time on computers.  Previous work found that people self-reported spending an average of about 6 hours a day on the computer. When exposure time is high, it  means that risk of pain or injury is high.  One of the most interesting studies that looked at pain associated with computer use was published by Gerr et al.  in 2002.  Those researchers followed almost 600 new computer workers from their date of hire through their first year of employment.  One of their key takeaways was that “more than 50% of computer users reported Musculoskeletal Symptoms during the first year after starting a new job.”   When I see that statistic, I’m always surprised that people don’t take computer pain more seriously.  The truth is – if you spend a lot of time on the computer, you’re at higher risk for pain or injury.  Pay attention to your body and take a few simple steps to improve your long-term comfort.  There are a number of great resources available with information on computer comfort, including: the National Institute of Health, HP’s safety and comfort guide, and of course the  Microsoft Hardware comfort page

People who have had injuries in the past tend to be strong advocates and good resources for learning about computer related pain.  For me, an injury is what launched my interest in ergonomics in the first place.  I was working designing exercise equipment on CAD all day, every day.   I didn’t know it at the time, but my desk was set too high causing me to shrug my shoulder as I worked with the mouse.  That was over 12 years ago, and I still have some chronic pain in my right shoulder as a result.  If I knew then what I know now, the injury would have been quite simple to prevent.   Yes – it’s much easier to prevent these types of injuries than it is to treat them.  Fortunately, my computer setup these days is really good so I’m able to manage the injury well.  But, the injury did inspire me to launch a career in ergonomic design and hopefully help other folks.

OK – that’s it for this installment.  If you have a story about pain at the computer, or if you have a story about a product that has helped you, I’d love to hear from you.   Next time I’ll write about my approach to ergonomics here at Microsoft.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog entry about how to pick the right mouse, and in the course of writing that post we discussed “what about people who want trackballs?” and “what about mice for left-handed people?” We decided to write a separate blog entry to talk more about how we decide what mice to include in our lineup. I talked to Elaine Ansell, who is the Product Manager for our mouse line, to get her thoughts about why we make what we make.

Q: Elaine, can you start by telling us a bit about what you do as the Mouse Product Manager?

A:  One of my main responsibilities as the Mouse Product Manager is to think about what products and technologies we need to develop in the next three to five years in order to meet our customers’ needs. For example, a while ago we realized that more and more people were carrying laptops around, so we introduced our first mobile mouse. Now we know that our customers need to use their mobile mice in lots of different places, so we developed our BlueTrack technology to track on difficult surfaces, and I make the case for where to incorporate that technology into our mouse products. I also look very closely at the value proposition for each and every mouse, so we have a very clear idea of how and why that mouse is going to meet the needs of our target consumers.

Q: What are some of the factors that go into choosing which mice we put in our lineup?

A: We’re always trying to balance the needs of a wide range of customers. For some people, ergonomics is the most important consideration. We have mice with varying degrees of ergonomic design to choose from. For other people, style is the most important. We’ve created some really beautiful mice, like our Arc Mouse, and our Studio Series of mice with patterns inspired by nature. We maintain a balance of wired and wireless mice, and mice sized for different uses or hand sizes. We also know that some people need comfort and style at value prices, while other people will spend more to get the mouse of their dreams, so we offer mice in different price ranges. Sometimes a mouse has been around for a while, so we replace it with a similar but fresher mouse design. Finally, we have to consider our retail partners and what styles and price points they want to buy from us to sell to their target end customers. Brick and mortar retailers only have so much shelf space, so they pick and choose to get an assortment of products that will sell well.

We balance all of this in our portfolio by doing a lot of research and a lot of listening. We do surveys and focus groups. We look at market research. We meet with the buyers for major retailers. We talk to our subsidiaries around the world to find out what will sell well in other countries. We bring hundreds of potential customers into our labs every year.* We keep up with the amazing advances being made by our Microsoft Research group. We turn our designers loose to create beautiful new forms and finishes. In the end it comes down to really finding out what our customers want and delivering that in a way that makes sense for our business. We keep track of how well we’ve pleased our customers by taking note of the trends for what they’re buying and what they aren’t.

Q: So why don’t mice made specifically for lefties make the cut?

A: About 10% of the general population is left handed. Our research shows that about half of those people use the mice in their left hand, while the other half uses the mouse primarily in their right hand (including several people who work in Microsoft Hardware.) There are also left-handed people who switch between left and right mouse usage to help reduce repetitive stress injuries, and right-handed people who mouse left to alleviate pain from mousing right. We decided to concentrate our mouse line on making great ambidextrous mice that are comfortable in either hand so we have several options at affordable price points, like our Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 and our Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000. We even have some ergonomic ambidextrous mice, including the Wireless Mobile Mouse 6000 and the Wireless Mouse 5000.

Q: What about trackballs?

A: We recognize that some people are very passionate about trackballs, but this is a very small subset of our customer base and it didn’t make business sense for us to continue that product line. We are continuing to investigate ways to make it easier for mobile mousers to use less space. For people who use trackballs primarily for ergonomic reasons, we make mice like our Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000.

We know one mouse doesn’t fit all, but we’re always working to balance our portfolio so everyone can find a mouse they can love.

* Would you like to help us make the best possible products? Sign up to be participant in our User Research Studies at the Microsoft User Research site.

1)      What size and shape of mouse is best for you? Mice come in two categories of size. Mobile or laptop mice tend to be a little smaller than standard sized mice so you can pack them away more easily. Depending on your mousing habits, you might not need to use a mobile mouse for extended periods of time, so you can get away with a smaller mouse that is more portable. Mobile mice can also work well for people with small hands, like me. If you like a larger mouse, you might actually prefer our SideWinder mouse as your everyday mouse, even if you aren’t into gaming. You can find out the dimensions of any Microsoft mouse by going to the product details pagefor the device and looking at the detailed picture.

2)      What type of connection is best for you? Mice are either wired or wireless. If you prefer less clutter and the freedom of no wires, then a wireless mouse is for you. Most wireless mice require a wireless transceiver to be plugged into an available USB port. Many newer wireless mice, particularly notebook or laptop mice, have very small Nano transceivers that barely stick out from the USB port. If you really can’t stand the idea of carrying around (or losing) a transceiver, you can consider a Bluetooth mouse. To use a Bluetooth device, you must have either an internal or external Bluetooth radio in your computer.

Another factor to consider is that wireless devices need batteries. Some mice are built to use rechargeable batteries and come with chargers. If you use a mouse with alkaline batteries, you can help extend battery life by remembering to turn off the mouse when it’s not in use. A primary advantage of wired mice is that there is never a need for battery replacements.

3)      What type of scroll wheel is best for you? The first scroll wheels had a bumpy feel to them as you roll them. Those are called “detent” scroll wheels. They are useful when you want more control over scrolling a row at a time in an Excel spreadsheet or want to swap weapons in a PC game. More recently Microsoft came out with scroll wheels that give a smooth, continuous scroll experience that lets you glide through long documents. Some people are die-hard detent scroll wheel fans, while others prefer smooth scrolling, so it’s good to know which you prefer and look for that feature in your wheel. Also, some scroll wheels scroll both vertically and horizontally, called 4-way scrolling.

4)      What special features do you need in a mouse? Some people never use more than the basic left click, right click, and scroll, but other people want as many extra buttons as they can get. Some mice are specifically tailored for ergonomic comfort, like the Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000, which has a design inspired by the comfortable shape of a baseball and great for people who experience discomfort from standard mice. Some mice come in just one color while other lines have a variety of colors to choose from. Some mice are designed for specific tasks like gaming or giving presentations. BlueTrack mice have special tracking that makes them good for mousing on odd surfaces like your kitchen countertop or upholstered couch. My personal favorite, the Arc Mouse, was designed to be a full-sized mouse that looks stylishly curved, but folds up small enough to fit in my pocket as I run from meeting to meeting. And it comes in purple, my favorite color!

Of course the best way to choose a mouse is to get your hands on it and use it. Many retailers provide sample mice that you can touch or even try out at the computer displays. What features are most important to you when choosing a mouse?