Custom classroom furniture
Identifying a need
In the early 2000s, Massey University released a study on classroom furniture that showed that the desks and chairs used by New Zealand school students didn't suit their needs – 96% were the wrong height and 56% were the wrong depth. Already well aware of the issues, Hawke's Bay classroom furniture manufacturer Furnware were doing their own research, both in New Zealand and overseas.
"We looked around the world to see what was happening," said then Furnware Ambassador Pat Kane. "There were draft standards at that time and a system for getting kids into the right sized furniture, but nobody used it because of the preference of schools that everything be of a standard size."
Worldwide, as in New Zealand, the main criteria for classroom furniture were price, durability and stackability. Some suppliers were, for example, reducing the gauge of the metal to make the chairs lighter, but of a lesser quality – because they looked the same to the schools the cheapest quote would win, said Pat.
"At Furnware, we were asking: Was this being fair to the kids, to have them sit for 13 years on furniture that cost $35? Would adults, for example, be prepared to sit on such low quality furniture for such a long time?"
Furnware decided to put together a series of focus groups of school managers and teachers, to see if they thought it feasible to have different sized furniture in their classrooms, and trialled such furniture in some classrooms.
The results were immediate and profound – with a marked improvement in class behaviour and far fewer interruptions. "The schools were absolutely staggered at the difference that having kids in the right-sized furniture made. What had been interpreted as behaviour issues were suddenly understood for what they were – comfort issues."
Pat says students engaged immediately because they were being listened to and their needs respected. "When we gave the kids the background and explained all the research, they bought into it right away. They just loved it – someone's really been thinking about them. And this improved the relationship between the teacher and the students – there was a feeling of greater mutual respect."
Furnware's research uncovered an interesting study being done by Dieter Breithecker which involved two similar schools – one in Germany and one in Belgium – and demonstrated that if you could get students moving more, their productivity improved.
So the challenge was there for the Furnware designers – could they come up with different sized desks and a 'dynamic chair', one with a pivoted seat and back so the student could move comfortably without having to lean back dangerously on the chair. The new designs were to solve as many other shortcomings of the current desk and chair designs as possible, informed by feedback from focus groups of property managers and caretakers.
A historical snapshot – the New Zealand school desk. (Click to enlarge)
The increased size of the new desktop created the opportunity to explore the concept of a side storage unit.
(Click to enlarge)
Furnware then undertook a massive data-gathering programme.
They measured about 19,000 students, aiming to get a representative sample of 50 in each 'cell' from Year 0 through to Year 13 – a cell being, for example, Samoan boys in Year 4, or Māori girls in Year 8. The data gave the company a profile for every classroom in the country, based on the year level and the ethnic/gender mix of the students. They then worked out the product mix that suited a specific classroom.
Principals appreciated what Furnware were trying to do and how helpful it could be to them, and were very quick to offer to participate in the research, said Pat. "They were really very helpful in allowing us into their schools to measure the students. In the end we were able to measure one student in seven seconds. There were two of us moving around the country doing it, so it was quite an involved process."
In 2005, Furnware introduced their new range called Bodyfurn, which included a new student desk and the dynamic chair, in a range of sizes. The increased size of the desktop opened the opportunity to later develop a clip-on side storage unit for the desk. This case study follows the development of the clip-on side storage unit, from concept development through to manufacture and marketing.
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