Anthropometric. It may not be the sort of word you hear around the water cooler every day, but then you probably don’t work at Formway.

Anthropometry, the study of the human shape, is a preoccupation at Formway. This preoccupation was the catalyst for designing a chair that is changing the way people work.

The story of this chair began with the design team at Formway asking two very simple questions: why should office chairs dictate your body position? Why couldn’t there be a chair that moulds to your body and gives almost unlimited freedom to move when and how you wish?

They observed that people moved constantly at their desks. Their time lapse studies showed workplaces were like an unchoreographed ballet of people twisting, stretching, reaching and spinning – all from their desks. Whether reaching for the phone or to talk to the person behind them, people were constantly moving. Unfortunately, their chairs were not so obliging.

Formway wanted to create a chair that was intuitive, that sensed and responded to a person’s weight without the need for levers or knobs. They wanted to free people from chairs that were functional only when you were in a single position and didn’t move.

It was by understanding how dynamic the sitting process can be, that led to the Life Chair.

The Insights

Don’t be intimidated by history

Just because chairs have been around for tens of thousands of years, there’s no reason why there’s not a better way of making them. The way Formway saw it, history was actually weighing on the chair, because people had strong preconceived notions of how chairs should look and perform. Design team leader Bob Stewart said his team was driven by a vision of a fundamentally new way of sitting and working.

Look for and observe what people don’t expect

The Formway design team spent the first portion of the design and development phase studying the way people sit at work. They were able to identify what people needed but hadn’t yet thought about or articulated. They realised the workplace had changed considerably – the move to open plan layouts and a greater level of multi-tasking meant people were less likely to be locked in place, immobile behind their desks.

Make a science of studying the competition

Formway people, including design director Mark Pennington visited scores of furniture shows over 22 years, largely to study what were then considered the leading workplace chairs in the world. Mark Pennington: “While many of the chairs we saw as world benchmarks had impressive capabilities, none were complete solutions. We thought they were seriously compromised, particularly the way they constrained people’s movement and in the relative and unnecessary complexity of their design and construction.”

Start with a human, not a product

If you’re designing a product for the human body, start with the body, not the product. Initially, Formway’s primary focus in developing the Life Chair was on the human form rather than the form of the product they would make. This was the only way they could deliver the insights necessary to create a product that was fundamentally different, rather than one that was based on existing notions of what a chair should be.

Design for future trends

A key component in the design of the Life Chair was the knowledge that recyclability was likely to become an increasingly important consideration in purchase decision-making, particularly in Europe. Because of this, 62% of the Life Chair is made from recycled material and 90% of the Life Chair’s components and materials are recyclable. The chair is also made to be easily dismantled into its component parts to make recycling possible.

Designing the difference

The design team set about creating a chair that worked as intuitively as the person sitting in it.

The design team’s response began with a fundamentally fresh way of thinking. They focused on humans, not chairs.

Rather than a chair that needed to be manually adjusted to the body, they believed they could design a chair that did this automatically, using the body’s weight as a counterbalance.

The result was an intuitive chair that senses movement and adjusts to the weight, size and shape of the individual. It uses the body weight to maintain constant equilibrium and to respond fluidly to movements.

The seat is a flexible membrane of moulded plastic that supports and flexes in three dimensions. This was a major design challenge because this creates two opposing forces – the need for constant support and the need for a highly malleable and constant membrane that moves with the body. Formway needed to achieve an almost infinite range of seating positions – all determined by the weight and the pressure applied by the body – yet with a high degree of strength and durability.

Engineers in the US, for example, said a tool could not be made to meet Formway’s specifications for a lumbar support. To address the design’s requirement of a polymer that had a hard back and a soft front, two different polymers needed to be combined. Ian Footitt, a design engineer at Formway and Wanganui’s Axiam came up with a new manufacturing technique that co-moulded the polymers.

Another design challenge was making arm rests to the same minimalist style as the chair and integrating these with the overall design, rather than appearing over-built and bolted on as many competitors’ chairs did. The design also needed to integrate a range of different materials in a way that ensured both full functionality, but also the ability for the Life Chair to be easily dismantled into its component parts for recycling.

The Insights

Come at design from both sides

Design briefs at Formway are signed off by two distinct groups – the “stakeholder team” (including company strategy, marketing, international and finance) and the design team (product managers, designers, representatives of process engineering, parts and logistics, and engineering customer services). The stakeholder team brings an impartial perspective as its members measure and assess progress against the design brief.

Understand the power of the brief

Formway managing director Rick Wells says good briefs should expose opportunities and insights that light up the eyes of not only the designers, but other members of the Formway team. Wells says the brief coupled with the design process should increase people’s ownership of outcomes and give the freedom to decide how they’ll deliver them.

Design the chair around its likely means of production

From the earliest stage of development the design team knew that if their design was profoundly different, it would have the potential to be licensed by third parties elsewhere in the world. The potential value of this intellectual property was a key reason the team was given the freedom to invest the equivalent of 20 person years in the research, conceptualisation, development and productionisation of the Life Chair.

Test functionality distinct from form

Much of the end-user testing of the Life Chair assessment involved blind-testing. This reflected the design team’s commitment to ensuring that perceptions of the chair’s functionality were not influenced by the chair’s form. Removing one of the five senses helped ensure other senses were heightened, in particular that of touch/feel.

Maximise general involvement

Formway actively encourages the involvement of the full range of staff in considering and commenting on design developments before and during prototyping. Rick Wells says excluding people can come at a high cost because new products evolved solely by designers can require significant redesign as they move through design, tooling and productionisation phases. This is because specialists at every step of the process have practical insights, considerations and needs that must be factored in to the product’s development. This collaborative approach is reinforced by the company’s internal mission statement which is headed “Make Work Better”, a direct reference to the company’s commitment to encouraging full participation in a better product outcome and ultimate work environment.

The design dividend

Great design has created a barrier to competition and an ongoing revenue opportunity.

Since The Lifechair was launched in 2002, Formway has achieved $6.5 million in sales within Australasia alone. Perhaps more significantly, Formway has earned, internationally, substantial licensing fees and royalties from the Life Chairs made in the United States under licence. Every time a Life Chair rolls off the production line in East Greenville, Formway’s bottom line improves.

For Formway, there is no better demonstration of the power of great design. It has enabled them to license the design to an established international manufacturer/distributor with highly developed marketing and distribution systems. Key to this was the value of the intellectual property in the design which removed the need for significant infrastructural development offshore and has ensured an ongoing revenue stream. It has also allowed the company to channel funding back into new product development which, in turn, will be licensed offshore.

The Life Chair took 20 person years to develop, yet in less than three years the revenues from the licensing agreement alone, let alone the revenues from the manufacture of the chair in New Zealand and Australia, will have recouped the entire development costs. Beyond that point, nearly every dollar earned by Formway from its licensing agreements is profit. The level of financial and time-based commitment to creating the Life Chair has another major benefit. While the chair is being consistently assessed for refinement opportunities, the quality of the concept, design and end result is such that it has a projected sales life of 10-15 years.

The success of the Life Chair is a major factor in giving Formway the confidence to employ 20 design personnel, compared with zero when Rick Wells and a colleague purchased the company in 1981. This has created a design-based culture that is benefiting every other product that is conceived and developed by Formway.

The Insights

Keep it simple

One of Formway’s goals for the Life Chair was to have minimal moving parts. This has led not only to greater functionality and elegance but has also ensured an economy of inputs. Parts are slimmer and lighter, reflecting Formway’s goal of producing less wastage, ease of refurbishment and easy disassembly for recycling. As a result, the Life Chair uses resources more efficiently and is lighter than its competitors.

What you perceive as a liability may be your greatest asset

Rick Wells sees the relatively isolated position on the world map of formway and New Zealand as an asset. “Our products are recognisably from the South Pacific, as our American partners have noted. In New Zealand we have the space to think and create without being unduly influenced by the immediacy of the world market. There is a freshness in our approach.”Wells believes New Zealand’s size has fostered winning traits: “We’ve become incredibly nimble when walking across boundaries in design and technology. We’ve had to develop strengths across the board and that stands us in good stead creatively.”

Your difference is your IP

The patented IP behind the Life Chair is its most valuable asset. The ability to legally differentiate the product from those of competitors has created a barrier to competitors and created distance between Formway and its competition.

Create a vanguard product

The Life Chair is generating considerable revenue for Formway, both from sales of the product from its New Zealand and Australian manufacturing plants and its international licensing agreements. Yet ultimately the greatest benefit for Formway may prove to be the profile and credibility it has given the company with its broader range of products in a range of international markets.

Play hard but fair

Formway opens its products to considerable external scrutiny during the design development. The company engages a “Hard but Fair” panel – a group of up to 12 customers including architects and other specifiers who meet to analyse and discuss products at the concept and design phases. Feedback from the panel can lead to anything from a design tweak to a complete rethink on an issue. The process has the subsidiary benefit of increasing the company’s engagement with a highly influential group in its distributor and sales chain.

The design process

No two businesses approach the design process in exactly the same way. What they do share, however, is a structure that ensures the right people are engaged at the right time, and that responsibilities for specific outcomes are clear at each step. The Formway design process: