Indeed, the friendliest way to position/orient a display is as far away as you can comfortably put it to see all the small details you need to see (the further it is, the less the muscles in your eyes have to work to converge/focus), with the top of the display at or slightly below eye level (eyes are designed for looking downward for close work, and both converge and focus closer comfortably when looking at the lower part of the field of view), and the display tilted back a bit (15°?) at the top. Many “ergonomics guides” (and anecdotally from walking around various tech company offices, the vast majority of programmer workstations, in practice) get this one very wrong, recommending a display with eye level somewhere around the middle of the display, and the display oriented perpendicular to the table. Try to glance around the room at further objects relatively frequently, and occasionally stand up to walk around and take a break from close work.
Make sure to also sit up straight, not hunched or slouched, with the keyboard near the torso (the close side maybe half a foot from the belly), and upper arms hanging loosely at the sides. The palms/forearms should be free floating, not resting on any surface. At all costs keep the wrists as straight as possible. Typing should be light and springy.
Adjust the tilt of the keyboard so that its surface is approximately parallel with the forearms. A split keyboard which is tented even a little bit upward toward the middle and turned a bit so that the far side points inward relieves quite a bit of strain by reducing wrist pronation, but is not strictly necessary.
Unfortunately there hasn’t really been very much large-scale, carefully scoped and controlled, properly conducted/analyzed, anatomically motivated study of keyboard ergonomics. That is, there have been a large number of research studies but almost all of them were garbage for one reason or another. As a result many of the most important conclusions about proper typing style can best be discovered by reading directly about anatomy, investigating proper technique for other tools, and doing careful personal experimentation/analysis. Reading keyboard-specific ergonomics literature does not necessarily lead to healthy recommendations or physical keyboard designs.
> get this one very wrong, recommending a display with eye level somewhere around the middle of the display
Maybe this is because I wear glasses and don't move my eyes much (tend to move whole head when shifting gaze because looking through center of glasses works best), but when my monitor is low, it eventually causes strain on my neck and shoulders. It also causes me to slouch a lot as I try to fix the positioning subconsciously.
Before I had a monitor with a riseable base, I used to put my monitor on a book or two.
In general people can keep their heads upright and balanced above the spine. It is not in general necessary to move or turn the head to look slightly downward. No idea about glasses though.
Your recommendation doesn't take into account monitor size. If you always keep the top at eye level, the larger a monitor you get (assuming same distance away), the farther and farther down most of the monitor will be. Monitor sizes have grown a lot over time.
I have a 27 inch display, and the top of it is easily 6 inches below my eye level. It is about 3 feet away from me, so about 5°–35° angle measure below my eye level from top to bottom. It’s perfectly comfortable to see the whole display without moving my head from an upright position.
Put the display on an VESA mount attached to an articulating arm and put the bottom of the display bezel directly on the table or slightly above. Maybe if you have a 40 inch display it starts getting tough.
Was curious and decided to test it out. Swiveling my eyes horizontally works great, no head movement needed unless I'm looking at the far edges of the screen.
Up-down, I move my head almost immediately.
My understanding is that glasses have an optimal viewing angle centered around your pupils where your perscription is perfect. As you start looking through different parts of the lens, it gets less perfect. At extreme angles you start seeing the frames themselves and it's annoying.
Freeform and digitally surfaced single-vision lenses have less peripheral distortion away from the optical center of the lens. Round/oval metal frames will reduce visibility of the frame edge, if the frame fits well and the eye size is tall enough.
Lenses: Essilor “Eyezen+ 0” CR-39 lens+AR is ~$120 online or Zeiss Individual SV ~$300. If you have prescription with sphere stronger than -3, the improvement in peripheral vision can be useful for large or multiple monitors.
Make sure to also sit up straight, not hunched or slouched, with the keyboard near the torso (the close side maybe half a foot from the belly), and upper arms hanging loosely at the sides. The palms/forearms should be free floating, not resting on any surface. At all costs keep the wrists as straight as possible. Typing should be light and springy.
Adjust the tilt of the keyboard so that its surface is approximately parallel with the forearms. A split keyboard which is tented even a little bit upward toward the middle and turned a bit so that the far side points inward relieves quite a bit of strain by reducing wrist pronation, but is not strictly necessary.
Unfortunately there hasn’t really been very much large-scale, carefully scoped and controlled, properly conducted/analyzed, anatomically motivated study of keyboard ergonomics. That is, there have been a large number of research studies but almost all of them were garbage for one reason or another. As a result many of the most important conclusions about proper typing style can best be discovered by reading directly about anatomy, investigating proper technique for other tools, and doing careful personal experimentation/analysis. Reading keyboard-specific ergonomics literature does not necessarily lead to healthy recommendations or physical keyboard designs.