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A new type of product which could be said to be mostly challenging to designers is IT / furniture accessories and in fastidious supports for monitors. These products have came out as new concepts during the last fifteen or so years to improve the experience of using technology from a human and technical point of view.
The justification of using a flat screen monitor arm as different to the stand supplied by screen manufacturers is that the arm allows movement of the monitor to suit the user. As well as up and down movement to regulate the screen to the right height, monitors can be moved extra closely to the computer user and tilted for precision viewing or the evasion of screen glare. Monitors can be finished to sweep or swing across a desk, thus the name “swing arm” is also frequently used interchangeably to explain a “monitor” or “flat screen arm”.
The confront for the swing arm designer is not immediately to generate a new product idea which can fulfill a tricky grouping of functions, but it also to design an object that get better the overall aesthetic of an interior. The design of office interiors has become increasingly valued during current years, to the level which the look of these products is now as important to those who identify and purchase them as their functionality. However, it’s not immediately about style: HR experts and switched on managers appreciate the positive benefits that stylish interior, appealing, and well designed furniture and accessories can have on employee recruitment, motivation and retention.
A swing or flat screen arm is a strange and hard product area to design for, creating real challenges for the product designer. Evaluate for example the different considerations in the design of a mobile phone: there are lots of design issues to think about but first and leading it’s a matter of packaging. The core of the design concise is to enclose the technology in a beautiful outer wrapper. Whereas a monitor or swing arm has to move in every way; there are different and composite joints and mechanisms and they have to carry an important and changeable load. All this, while maintaining their simplicity and clarity from a visual point of view. These types of products in fact push the boundary between design and engineering. Certainly in a lot of examples those who design these products have skilled or have a strong grab of both disciplines. Such products could even be said to be clean of design, in the wisdom that nothing is surplus. There is a strong human class too with the noticeable anatomical references to the “arms” that support flat screen monitors.
It is a area where designers and manufacturers can actually add value by creating a easy product that can transform a desk into a bespoke ergonomic workstation.
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