Steelcase’s Gesture Chair: Designed To Support Today’s Technologies

I love office chairs. In fact, I try to sit in them whenever possible. Herman Miller Sayl at Room & Board? Check. Haworth Very at Crate & Barrel? You know it.

Steelcase has a new chair that looks pretty interesting – and you can bet I’ll try it out when one crosses my path. What makes the Gesture chair unique is its positioning as being designed for modern technology postures.

What does that mean? In short that you probably don’t sit with perfect secretarial, computer posture at your desk because you’re hunched over your phone, on your tablet, or just being a slouch. Steelcase has even named some of these modern seating styles – my position of choice is #7, ‘The Trance’:

9-new-postures-steelcase

Here are the key features of the chair:

gesture-3-core-interfaces1) The Core Interface.

  • The Gesture back and seat move as a synchronized system moving with each user to provide continuous and persistent support.
  • The back cradles the user no matter the posture or device.

2) The Limb Interface:

  • The Gesture arm moves like the human arm, which allows users to be supported in any position.
  • Arms and shoulders remain supported when texting on a smartphone, typing on a keyboard or swiping a tablet.

3) The Seat Interface:

  • The Gesture seat brings comfort all the way to the edges.
  • It is flexible at the perimeter to allow users to sit in a range of postures without obstruction.

4) The User Interface:

  • Gesture takes into account various body types and sitting preferences, quickly adjustable to meet the needs of each individual user.
  • Users can adjust Gesture as easily as adjusting their posture.

Steelcase isn’t the first to release a chair that is aimed at being more flexible – see Turnstone’s Cobi or Knoll’s Generation series. And with many chairs seemingly aiming to be simpler to use, it will be interesting to see how intuitive the adjustments of the Gesture prove to be as to not be too overwhelming.

Anyway, check out what the Gesture looks like. It is scheduled to be released Fall 2013.