One way to design a chair is to start with the hard measurements, using handy reference guides like these. But some of you may prefer to "feel" your way around the problem, setting up planes at different angles and sitting in them to see how they feel, then tweaking until you find the desired fit.
For those of you in the latter camp, the quickest way to do this while generating measureable data is to build a "chair rig." Most of you that went through a furniture design program have seen (or built) one of these, but for those that haven't, here's a pretty standard one built by Jonathan Panichella during his days as an ID student at the University of Cincinnati:
With a rig like this, it's easy to quickly reset the angles--and of course, have folks of different sizes try out your configurations. Panichella used this to work out a desireable position, enlisting the help of classmates. "They all found it quite comfortable!" he writes. "From the shortest girl:"
"To the tallest guy:"
(By the bye, the rig two of my furniture design professors showed me had sides made from metal grids comprised of one-inch squares. This made it easy to stick pipes in and out of, and didn't require any drilling.)
Lastly, here's some shots of Panichella's finished product:
Nice work!
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