TiltChair: Manipulative Posture Guidance by Actively Inclining the Seat of an Office Chair

Abstract

We propose TiltChair, an actuated office chair that physically manipulates the user’s posture by actively inclining the chair’s seat to address problems associated with prolonged sitting. The system controls the inclination angle and motion speed with the aim of achieving manipulative but unobtrusive posture guidance. To demonstrate its potential, we first built a prototype of TiltChair with a seat that could be tilted by pneumatic control. We then investigated the effects of the seat’s inclination angle and motions on task performance and overall sitting experience through two experiments. The results show that the inclination angle mainly affects the difficulty of maintaining one’s posture, while the motion speed affected the conspicuousness and subjective acceptability of the motion. However, these seating conditions did not affect objective task performance. Based on these results, we propose a design space for facilitating effective seat-inclination behavior using the three dimensions of angle, speed, and continuity. Furthermore, we discuss promising applications.