Sean Ross works in IT and has spent nearly 20 years sitting at a desk for 8-12 hours a day. After a back injury and severe osteoarthritis in his spine, he wanted a desk where he had the option to both standing and sitting.
“A few years ago I discovered that standing for part of the day versus sitting alleviated a lot of this pain,” he says.
With the standing desk craze emerging a couple of years ago, Ross – who runs photographic community Apug.org – spent time looking for the perfect desk.
“I wanted to sit some of the time and I did not want a large, bulky expensive mechanical desk to achieve this.
“I felt the solution should be simple, with a small footprint, sturdy and beautiful and cost effective.”
He couldn’t find one, so he approached a couple of friends, freelance designer Dominic McKiernan, and Hayden Breese, founder of digital and brand agency Myth.
Two years on and the trio have created Elevate, which they have now listed on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. By Wednesday this week they had achieved raising over $8000 of their $20,000 pledge goal, which ends on April 4.
Elevate moves away from typical standing desks; instead it places the screen at a comfortable level and provides a secondary keyboard and mouse area.
It’s fully portable and comes flat packed, but it is also easy to assemble and disassemble, so people can use it at work and then take it home, if they want.
After dozens of designs, experiments and prototypes Elevate now has a product that the founders are happy with and can build on.
The desk attachment can be moved up and down the main frame, to suit a user’s height, and Ross says the wood chosen meant he could create a product that looked good too.
“I played with a couple of different materials and birch ply became the central focus, as it’s used across the world and is quite stable.
All three creators already use the desk and have seen the benefits themselves. McKiernan’s 10-year-old son also uses the desk, and it has has reduced his tendency to slouch, Ross says.
If the Kickstarter campaign is successful, McKiernan hopes to design different versions that will hold more than just one monitor and perhaps even create a floor standing desk.
