Abstract
Being seated has increasingly pervaded both working and leisure lifestyles, with development of more comfortable seating surfaces dependent on feedback from subjective questionnaires and design aesthetics. As a consequence, research has become focused on how to objectively resolve factors that might underpin comfort and discomfort. This review summarizes objective methods of measuring the microenvironmental changes at the body-seat interface and examines the relationship between objective measurement and subjective sensation. From the perspective of physical parameters, pressure detection accounted for nearly two thirds (37/54) of the publications, followed by microclimatic information (temperature and relative humidity: 18/54): it is to be noted that one article included both microclimate and pressure measurements and was placed into both categories. In fact, accumulated temperature and relative humidity at the body-seat interface have similarly negative effects on prolonged sitting to that of unrelieved pressure. Another interesting finding was the correlation between objective measurement and subjective evaluation; however, the validity of this may be called into question because of the differences in experiment design between studies.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 6715 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-30 |
Number of pages | 30 |
Journal | Sensors |
Volume | 20 |
Issue number | 23 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 24 Nov 2020 |
Keywords
- Comfort
- Discomfort
- Pressure
- Relative humidity
- Sedentary behaviour
- Temperature