Custom Design Choices

Incorporate the features you need in your WoodStyle design.

• Keyboard and Monitor Height
• Adjustability
• Left-Handed Design
• Using Space Wisely
• Optimizing for Your Way of Working
• Accommodating Your Equipment Combinations
• Cable Management

Keyboard and Monitor Height

Whatever your height, it is important that your keyboard and monitor height be adjusted so that you can work for extended periods of time in comfort. Your monitor also needs to be positioned so that you can see it, even if you wear bifocal glasses.

• We can build a desk at just the right height for you. Here's a chart of comfortable keyboard heights for very tall or very short users.
• We can build a desk that adjusts to various users by means of a hand crank.
• For users of bifocal glasses, we can recess the monitor down into the work surface.

Adjustability

If your child or children use your home computer, it is wonderful to have a way to vary the height of the computer. Usually, either the computer furniture is optimized for the adults and the children have to dangle their feet and arch their wrists or the furniture is optimized for one of the children and other family members have to stuff their legs under the keyboard and bend their wrists upward. If you spend much time in these awkward positions, the lack of good posture can become extremely uncomfortable and discouraging.

For this reason, we have developed a mechanism for raising and lowering the monitor and keyboard shelves with the use of a small crank. The range of the adjustment is 8" and can easily be adjusted even by a child. An adult is able to adjust it while seated at the computer. This mechanism can be incorporated into most computer furniture models and is also very useful in offices where there are multiple users for specific computers, particularly where individual heights may vary considerably.

Left-Handed Design

Usually left-handed persons have to adapt in many ways to furniture designs that are standardized for right-hand users. When you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, this can make you quite uncomfortable.

We can design computer desks specifically for left-handed operators. These design features include:

• Desktops can be organized to favor the left-handed person by moving the location of grommets that carry the cable to the mouse or other input device.
• Writing space area can be maximized on the left side.
• If the mouse shelf if separate, we can place it to the operator's left.
• Pull-out shelves and drawers can be located primarily on the left.
• L-shaped work areas can be located on the left.
• Hutch unit features are designed for left-hand use.

All custom designs are subject to your review and input to assure optimum efficient layout for the way you work.

Using Space Wisely

Custom-built furniture can effectively use space that is too small or oddly shaped for traditional furniture. Corner areas in particular afford many opportunities.

For computer use, the space should have a minimum width of 30" if a mouse is being used. A depth of 21" is satisfactory if there is a pull-out keyboard shelf. If the keyboard is to be placed on the desktop, then the depth should be 30".

Hutches for books, manuals, paper organizers, disk storage and peripheral equipment can be designed and built in a wide variety of heights and configurations to optimally use any other adjacent nooks and crannies.

Optimizing for Your Way of Working

Your desk can reflect your individual work habits. In many instances the differences in desk layout are subtle but for full-time users these small changes can contribute greatly to your efficiency and pleasure. We can:

• build a desk for you with enough table surface to layout papers, etc. where you need it.
• build in task lighting under shelves in hutches.
• position drawers, shelves, and nooks, where they make the most sense for the way you work.
• mount white boards or corkboards inside doors or mount a "copy clip" for you.

Accommodating Your Equipment Combinations

The large number of computer peripherals, plus equipment interfaces, make it impossible for furniture manufacturers to provide standard furniture units that accommodate every situation.

Some of these include:

• Video cameras
• Microphones
• Mailing machines
• External fax machines
• Scanners
• Large stereo speakers
• Copiers
• External modems, tape or disk drives
• CD-ROM drives

We are able to design computer furniture units that include these items in a single workstation. We also provide flexible wire/cable management systems so that you can reconfigure when necessary.

Cable Management

With each computer furniture unit we build a trough or well inside the back to contain excess wires and cables. A six-outlet surge suppresser is normally installed near the trough and both the outlet and trough are then covered by a hinged wood plate so that all is concealed but still easily accessible.

In addition to desktop grommets, all compartments within the unit have access openings to run wires and cables unseen throughout the unit.

Where task lights are installed in hutches, small wooden raceways conceal its wires.

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This page is designed and maintained by Crystal Communications. Page last revised on January 06, 1999