Anyone here using a standing desk?

[mouser]

Looks awesome.

[Deozaan]

There are some changes, i.e. different keyboard,

Somewhat off-topic, but can you link me to the thread where you posted about your home-made/custom keyboards?

I found this, but the images don't match: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=42493.0

[wraith808]

That's the thread, but I just haven't updated.  Need to do that! 

[AzureToad]

The company I work for just sent around an email inviting each of us to sign up for a standing desk from Varidesk. Many have signed up (50+), most have opted in for a mat as well. Looking forward to trying it as my middle has been expanding wa-a-a-y too large!

I'll follow up once it's arrived and have had a chance to use it a bit.

[IainB]

@AzureToad:

I'll follow up once it's arrived and have had a chance to use it a bit.

Have you got any feedback yet for those of us as might be interested, please?
I'd be very interested - studies of work environment design and ergonomic have shown that these factors can have profound effects on the worker's productivity and sense of well-being.
However, some recent research seems to indicate that the supposed benefits of open plan offices are not as straightforward as had been hypothesised/believed: The Open Office Revolution Has Gone Too Far

I don't usually like to quote HBS as it's comment often seems to be biased (e.g., self-serving) or of dubious merit, but the link is about what could be some properly-done - and thus worthwhile - objective research.

Some interesting and salient points:

• Those [late 20th century open plan office studies] are fine for understanding individual perceptions, but aren’t so good at quantifying real behavioral responses and organizational performance outcomes from open offices. The gap between perceptions and real outcomes has now become the battleground for employees and employers on this issue.

• Technology—in this case specifically, wearable technology—has enabled us to track individual or dyadic interactions at a really refined level. It’s not just “did you do this?” but “you did X, Y, and Z at this particular time with these other people.” If I was going to dive into researching open offices, I wanted to do it more empirically, tracking variables that were previously unfathomable to measure beyond proxies and guessing.

• It depends on what you’re trying to achieve with open offices. My understanding, from speaking with real estate managers and architects, is companies’ conversations about the built environment tend to start with cost per square foot. If the question is how to lower costs, the answer is more people per square foot, and open offices will always have the upper hand on that dimension.

• My hope is that this research throws a bucket of ice water on the idea that there’s no tradeoff—that you will naturally both save in real estate costs and get more collaboration from this kind of design.

• His colleague then piped up and pointed out that all of the “noise” (as an indication of interactions) actually comes from behind the closed doors of the separate, team-based spaces. That should make us wonder: if all the noise is coming from behind closed doors, isn’t that where people are interacting and working well together? Wouldn’t you maybe want more of that?

• Here is perhaps one way to summarize the shift in perspective that is suggested by this work. In the past, when it comes to workplaces, office design (and many other artifacts of organizational life) have catered to the observer and not the observed. Unfortunately, it’s the observed who make our organizations successful. So maybe everything, from office design to people analytics, ought to shift slightly in mindset to optimize for their work more often.

[wraith808]

Still haven't taken the time to update my current setup (partly because it's so difficult to photograph because of space), but this is a look at how my standing station is currently set up.



I'm now using a Stalldesk instead of my prior cobbled together standing station, and couldn't be happier!  It's definitely a bit more ergonomic than my prior version.

[AzureToad]

Have you got any feedback yet for those of us as might be interested, please?
I'd be very interested - studies of work environment design and ergonomic have shown that these factors can have profound effects on the worker's productivity and sense of well-being.
However, some recent research seems to indicate that the supposed benefits of open plan offices are not as straightforward as had been hypothesised/believed: The Open Office Revolution Has Gone Too Far

Interesting.
Sorry, I don't have any personal feedback as I still don't have the standing desk installed at my desk. However, three workmates have the VariDesk desktop installed with varying degrees of usage.

One person is a younger (30's), health-conscious man. He seems to use his to adjust his seating / standing height a couple times each day.
Another person is an older (50's) man, also health-conscious but I haven't seen him change his desk height since it was installed, more than 2 months ago. Then again, he does spend an hour and half each day at the gym.
The last is a man in his 30's, smoker, not health-focused. I've seen him adjust his station but on average, only a couple times each week.

Of the two that do adjust their station height, they've spoken favorably of the VariDesk design, stating that it's easy, stable, and doesn't take a lot of time to move up or down.

Part of the delay with my station is a change in thinking for the standing desks. The management is now looking at adjustable legs, electrically powered to move the entire desktop up or down. They're still trying to figure out how to either switch from L-shaped desks to rectangle desks or somehow get the entire L-shape desktop to raise and lower.  My guess is that we'll be looking at switching to a rectangular desk, but time will tell.

[Shades]

You can also get desks that have long legs already. You can sit on a equally for that height adjusted chair. And if you want to use that desk standing, you just get off the chair and move it out of your way.

Much simpler approach for your company perhaps. As a benefit, the drawers in such a desk are also higher up, so you don't need to bend as much down (for those with having problems with their back, while the contents of drawers are still easily accessible when sitting behind such a desk. Easier to clean below such a desk as well.

[attachthumb=#]
Here is the best example of such a desk I could find on short notice.

[IainB]

Interesting research:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images and slightly edited for brevity by me.)

Report: U.S. workers hate ‘open’ office spaces Before you go knocking walls down or dismantling cubicles in the name of collaboration and productivity, peruse the results of this new survey. By Robby Brumberg - May 22, 2018 Would you change jobs to find a less annoying workspace? According to survey data collected by Bospar PR, it would appear many of us would—especially those toiling in an “open” office setting. The survey, which garnered responses from a diverse cross-section of 1,000 U.S. workers, found that 76 percent of Americans “hate open offices.” The top reasons cited included: Lack of privacy (43 percent) Overhearing too many personal conversations (34 percent) Cannot concentrate (29 percent) Worries that sensitive information can be leaked (23 percent) Can’t do their best thinking (21 percent) Despite a recent trend of employers tinkering with barrier-free offices, community benches and desk clumps, the science is not sanguine about open workspace productivity. Some have even called such layouts a “disaster.” What is it workers want, then? 84% of Bospar’s respondents said working from home would be ideal. Nearly 60% cited “not having to commute” as a top reason for wanting to work remotely, and 41% indicated that they’d be more productive working from home. 35% said that remote work would enable them to produce more “thoughtful” output. As Bospar executive Curtis Sparrer put it: “An overwhelming majority of Americans want to work in quiet places, but they can’t do that in today’s open office environments.” Workplace environment appears to be a hill that many employees are willing to die on—or at least take a pay cut over. According to the survey, “Eighteen percent would pursue a new job to have a workspace they like better, and 9 percent would petition to work part-time in an environment they do like.” Amid the clamor for more collaboration, connectivity, corporate camaraderie and increased participation, companies are inevitably alienating some workers. Most, it would seem, would prefer to work in a quiet, non-distracting atmosphere. That might be the most universally desired and appreciated work perk of all. You can learn more about Bospar’s research here.

________________________
What I find fascinating is the apparent lack of any historical perspective and that there seems to be little - if anything - that is new in these research results - they serve to reinforce past research as being just as relevant today as it was decades ago. For example, the 84% of Bospar’s respondents who said that working from home would be ideal - that preference would seem to have been pretty well-established by the entrepreneur Steve Shirley since her formation of F International in the '60s. (F International was a British freelance software and systems services company, founded as Freelance Programmers in England in 1962 - Wikipedia).

So why hasn't anything been done to provide what would essentially be improved working environments that were more conducive to productivity for office workers?
From experience as a lapsed bean counter, my take is that it's still all about direct/indirect costs, as in, for example:

In any event, I would suggest that such research is probably irrelevant, and that the only research that made (and still makes) standing desks a no-brainer for management is likely to be that accounting "research" which could demonstrate indisputably that standing desks:

• require a lower area of floor space per employee, which enables higher density packing, which reduces the average fixed costs (rent and rates based on square footage of occupancy), thus enabling a higher average profit per employee to be achieved.
  
• enable reduced/minimised office set-up, downsizing/upsizing or relocation costs, and reduced/minimised downtime associated with same, compared to conventional offices.

[tomos]

^ slightly off-thread-topic, but 84% believing they can work better from home does not necessarily mean they can work better from home (says the bloke who tried to work from home [self-employed] for 15 years, and eventually gave it up as not-suited-to-me).

So why hasn't anything been done to provide what would essentially be improved working environments that were more conducive to productivity for office workers?
From experience as a lapsed bean counter, my take is that it's still all about direct/indirect costs

seems likely :-/

[IainB]

...but 84% believing they can work better from home does not necessarily mean they can work better from home...

Yes, I noticed that too. The survey is not a valid piece of research - it's just a survey. The 84% could all be mistaken. For example, like the 17 million people who voted to leave the EU in the British-held referendum.