Indeed it is that time of the six weeks again, to turn in a deliverable. Earlier in the six weeks, my fellow team members and I planned out who would be in charge of writing certain sections in the deliverable and now it’s our individual responsibility to conduct our research and write our part.
Claudia and I are working together to write the Technical Background: Materials Research and/or applicable standards. The research portion of this section has been a bit tricky for us because there’s not much information about school furniture regulations or standards.
What we were able to find is that seating standards were mainly developed considering weight ranges rather than ages. In general, seating was estimated to occur 6.5 to 8 hours per day and 170 to 180 days per year in educational environments. (Fun Fact: People spend 2 to 4 hours sitting in bench tables or other seating options in common settings like lounges or cafeterias) So, the life of a product or in our case, a chair, is determined by an individual’s weight/size, daily hours of use, chair care and maintenance as well as the environment surrounding the product. Typically the life of a product ranges between 9.5 yo 10 years if it’s under good care and condition otherwise it lasts a good amount of time under ten years.
The chair standards I mentioned earlier, give my team and I a good idea of how long an educational chair should last in a school setting under the ideal conditions which I’m sure we have at ARS. The top half of our chosen chair is mostly sturdy since it mimics the design of a car seat. The back area of our ideal chair is going to include thick cushion to provide good lumbar support, and there’s even a neck support attached for students to rest the top of their spine. The bottom half of our chair is more unique and so I’m not quite sure if it’ll make it to the standard of a chair lasting ten years, but I’m confident that my team and I will find material sturdy enough to fulfill this requirement. The bottom of our chair is going to have a crossed-rope design as the bottom layer and then we are going to add a thick cushion on top of the rope system just in case not all students are fond of sitting on a net of ropes. The chair is being held by sturdy legs that resemble a lawn chair and we will include a pedal system by the feet so students are able to “exercise” their feet to better concentrate in class.
Our goal is provide comfort, mobility and durability in our ideal comfort chair and we hope to create one of the most efficient educational innovations yet. Go Comfort4U!
StarPathDesign 
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