Thought Bytes...
July 2004

The Shoe Analogy

Elaine loves shoes. She has shoes to match every outfit. She even has some shoes that she can only wear if she is going to be sitting for most of the time – they look great, but comfort is not their strong point.

I’m the complete opposite. For me, shoes are purely functional. I haven’t worn heels (maximum 1”) since the Christmas party last year. Most of the time I can be found in my Birks or my hiking boots. My concession to winter is to wear Birks that cover my toes. So, I find it odd that I often refer to shoes while I am doing ergonomic assessments. Over the years, the shoe analogy has grown. Here are some of the components of “The Shoe Analogy” and where I use them.

You wouldn’t go into a shoe store and try on just one pair of shoes before buying. (Although I do admit to having seen a pair, tried them on and bought them without every testing any others).

If a shoe store only sold one style of shoe and only in one size, would you be satisfied with your purchase?
Everybody and every body is a bit different. So, when we give everyone the same keyboard or mouse, how can we expect it to fit all the different sizes of hands? The same applies to the “corporate standard” chair. How can we expect it to fit all the variety of body’s that work in an office? Even an adjustable chair has limits on the types of bodies that will fit and be comfortable.

When you buy shoes, the sales person says to take them home and wear them indoors for a couple of day to try them out and make sure they fit.
Yet, when you buy a chair from a big box store, you get about 15 minutes of trial run in the store and then there are no returns. You really have no way of knowing how comfortable that chair will be when you pull up to your computer, in your office and sit in it for 3 or 4 hours.

Would you pass judgment on $200 running shoes without tying them up?
Why then, would you decide that a chair will not work for you without adjusting it for your needs. When a chair is delivered, there seems to be an assumption that it is already set up for your needs, so people sit in it and squirm around a bit and then jump to saying whether it fits or not.

Some shoes are made to look good and others are built for comfort. To get them both together you have to pay more.
It is easy to manufacture things that look good. But to make it so that it really fits and supports you takes an investment in research. Look at the warrantee as an indicator of the quality of the product.

We need arch supports in our shoes because we walk on surfaces (i.e. concrete) that we were not designed for. Our feet were designed to walk on sand, gravel and grass.
Our backs were designed for a variety of motions with a heavy emphasis on movement. Like our shoes, our chairs must support the structure when the spine is not being used the way it was supposed to.

If you were given one pair of shoes to try on, and you didn’t like them, would you refuse to ever try wearing shoes again?
I regularly have people tell me that they tried a headset, but didn’t like it, so they are not interested in trying again. Upon inquiry, I find out that they tried a colleague’s headset for a day a few years ago. It didn’t fit well, they felt tethered to the desk and the sound quality was bad. The reality is that technology has changed dramatically over the last few years so there are lots of different models, styles and fits to work with. As for being tethered to the desk, try putting the headset on when the phone rings and taking it off when you are finished.

We all have different sized feet, so we all wear different shoes.
Our hands are also very individual, so we wear different sized gloves. Similarly, we need to look at tailoring the hand tools we use (i.e. the keyboard and the mouse) to the hands and skills of the worker.

If you’ve been on your feet all day, it makes sense to get off them at the end of the day.
Give the rest of your body a break too. If you use your hands (or eyes, or head, or back) all day, then chose something that is physically different for your recreation activities.

Sometimes that moment of enlightenment comes from making mental connections. Do you have an analogy that you keep coming back to? Tell me about your analogies at staylor@ergosum.ca.

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