ZERO GRAVITY ERGONOMIC WORKSTATION
ERGONOMIC WORKPLACE IDEAS

KEYBOARD TABLE: TO BE OR NOT TO BE

If you have been doing some research into ergonomic workstations available on the market you might have seen some options with those swing & tilt adjustable keyboard desks. Most of the time they would be above your hips locking you in a working position and must be turned to the side if you want to get out of the chair. They are often attached to a highly leveraged swing-arm, ending up shaking when you type (just watch those videos closely) If something is attached to a swing-arm on one side - it will end up shaking & wobbling no matter what materials were used for it. Some table models would even be electrically driven! I wonder what they do if the power is out or the motor is malfunctioning.

The idea of a keyboard needing a table is just so deeply rooted in our minds that nobody is questioning it – that is nobody except for the LEVUS team who is questioning every aspect of the way we work with computers. When designing the workplace of tomorrow we questioned the keyboard table – and surprisingly came to the conclusion that we do not really need one. We tried them all - retractable telescopic arms and swing & tilt tabletops and realized that you just end up spending more time fiddling with the set up and little time with the actual work you were intending to do. The table restricts your freedom of movement as you would always have to swing it in and out.

More importantly though, with the zero gravity position your body is reclined – but so is the keyboard table. This results in your arms hanging up in the air above your body. Your heart is busy pumping blood up the arms which gets very uncomfortable after about 5 minutes of work. I would be very sceptical about those models where the user is happily reclined with his arms up on the table with the keyboard somehow glued to the surface. Holding your arms at a highly elevated position does not work for a prolonged period of time.

After numerous experiments we concluded that having the keyboard resting directly on your lap is the most comfortable set-up. Your arms are in a horizontal position along your body - with that half-lying-half-sitting position the blood flows horizontally, the limbs are not going numb since there are no pressure points or elevation to cope with. That condition is close to your sleeping position. Considering that we spend 33% of our lives sleeping - that is probably a good position to be in.

When you're done typing and want to get out of the workstation, just put the keyboard aside and leave it on the mouse table. That is way faster and more intuitive than fiddling with those movable keyboard tables. So we dropped the keyboard table altogether, only reconfirming the old wisdom: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away" (Antoine de Saint-Exupery).

Having said that....we still made a keyboard table for you! Some professions, like digital artists drawing on their tablets just really do need a table surface in front of them. Piano players would have to have their piano keyboards somehow mounted too. Having heard your feedback we went back to the drawing boards and designed a table, sticking to our core values of ergonomics,  simplicity and stability. Our design is not one of those shaky structures that most companies throw in just to stay they have a table. The Levus Keyboard Table is held by 4 steel rails and rests on sturdy pivots providing stability and comfort during typing / drawing or whatever you do on it. The cutaway lets it be positioned right next to you, so that your forearm can rest comfortably on the table surface. If you don't like the cutaway - just attach the table reversed facing the straight side. The table can be flipped up to get in and out of the workstation...or you can just crawl out sideways to avoid lifting it up.

We leave it up to you whether to have a keyboard table or not - the most important thing is your comfort during your work.

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