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You made some excellent points. There are several other considerations, too:
1) Positioning of any hard copy sources. If you use these, they should
be at the same elevation and distance as the monitor. This is why some
copy holders are made that attach to the monitor.
2) Desk surfaces should be fairly close to the color of paper--a
white, off-white, or light grey are ideal. White paper on a dark desk
is too much contrast and forces the eye to adjust too often, leading
to eye strain.
3) Monitor position--ergonomics. The top of the monitor should be
roughly on a level with your eyes; most efficient height is from eye
level to about 20 degrees below. That is exactly the position of my
21" monitor I use here at home. Desks that feature monitor positions
below the desk surface are generally not a good idea, for they cause
the "chicken neck" posture mentioned previously.
4) Lighting: Many offices are kept too bright by far. Better is a
somewhat lower and less glare-producing general illumination with
effective task lighting on the desk. You might be well advised to get
a sun visor to wear in the office to shade your eyes from excess
glare. Also, your desk lights are best when you use daylight-balanced
bulbs. They give better color rendition and are *much* more
comfortable for your eyes. The most famous lamps are the OttLites,
although there are many others now in the daylight-balance light
business and you can buy fluorescent bulbs and tubes of various types
that can convert standard lights to a reasonable facsimile of the
expensive types. I have an Eclipse computer light with a
daylight-balance compact fluorescent tube and an adjustable goose-neck
fluorescent with twin 2' tubes that originally came from a drafting
table, again with daylight tubes. I use this one when I am working
with multiple pieces of paper, as sometimes happens.
5) Dual monitors. In tests I have run, it appears that using twin
screens large enough to display two complete pages plus a number of
small auxiliary windows can save about 10 to 12% of your time. You can
put up on one screen the engineering doc you are referring to, the doc
you are writing on the other, with all the little floating windows for
formatting and such all at the same time. Because the screens are side
by side, you have them at the same distance.
6) Monitor position--glare. Many offices have monitors positioned
either directly in front of windows or at a 90-degree antle to a
window. The former requires too much eye adjustment due to the glare
from the rear, while the latter often has too much reflected glare
from the window. Repositioning the monitor to reduce both situations
is strongly recommended. In addition, an anti-glare screen for CRTs is
a very good idea as well, although the position should still be
adjusted away from either of the positions as I mentioned previously.
7) Keyboard. There are many "ergonomic" keyboards out with some
interesting configurations designed to reduce physical strain. One of
the more radical is the Safe-Type vertical keyboard and mouse. http://www.safetype.com Although it looks like a radical departure,
the science behind it looks to be sound.
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