Kickstarter focus: The standing desk

Need a desk that you can stand comfortably at, but still stay productive? Steven Yu may have the answer. The StandDesk is height-adjustable from 71cm to 114cm and has various design features that allow for the fact that the desk will be adjusted quite often. 
 

Source: Kickstarter. The all-black StandDesk version.

"StandDesk is more than just a product: it is a step in the right direction to change the lives of people everywhere, for the better," said Yu on his Kickstarter page.
 
A nifty 'up/down' control button automatically raises or lowers the desk to a desired height, stopping just by tapping the button again. A customised motor balances reliability, power, and price. 

There is an optional integrated cable management tray for power cords, for example, that moves up or down as the desk moves so the wires don't get dislodged.

Yu has thought of everything, and offers the desks in black or white as well as desk surfaces in three colours and various levels of customisation. A pledge of US$399 will get a backer a StandDesk in either gloss grey or matte black with the standard two-button control, plus a laminate top in either midnight black or frosty white, for example. For US$499 backers have the privilege of joining a hackathon where they may design or create new features for the StandDesk, with prizes for the top three designs. Shipping is extra, however.
 
The funding request ends May 17. View the associated video here.

Install a treadmill at your desk to get more productive

A study published in research journal Plos One in February has shown that walking on a treadmill at your desk may make you more productive than if you are at a standard desk and chair arrangement. 

Source: Plos One

Authors of "Treadmill Workstations: The Effects of Walking while Working on Physical Activity and Work Performance" Avner Ben-Ner and Chimnay Manohar from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Darla Hamann from the School of Urban and Public Affairs, University of Texas-Arlington, and Gabriel Koepp and James Levine from the Obesity Solutions department, Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University, conducted an experiment at a financial services company over 12 months to study how the availability of treadmill workstations would affect physical activity and work performance of employees. 

Half of a group of sedentary volunteers received treadmill workstations during the first two months of the study and the rest in the seventh month of the study. They could walk on the treadmills at speeds of 0 to 2 mph (0 to 3.2 km per hour), if they wished, in place of a chair-desk arrangement. 

According to weekly online performance surveys from participants, their supervisors, as well as sedentary colleagues, overall work performance, quality and quantity of performance, and interactions with co-workers all improved as a result of the treadmill workstations. Specifically, the treadmill workstation led to about 77 fewer sedentary minutes per day, out of about 600 ‘discretionary’ minutes for non-sedentary activity, including approximately 500 minutes at work during a weekday. This accounted for an increase in total average daily activity caloric expenditure of more than 74 calories. 

Management will wonder if participants did less work as a result of walking on the treadmill, but the researchers say no. Both participants and supervisors rated the volunteers as more productive over time, especially after "an early decline in performance" as participants had to learn how to handle walking on the treadmill while working on various tasks. 

The researchers caution that while the volunteers have been found to be similar to their colleagues, they might have been motivated to be more active in the first place. They also suggested that the complexity of the work tasks might also affect the results.