Office furniture was staid and boring for decades. Except for the big boss in the corner office, everyone else had a metal desk and a small upholstered chair that rolled on four casters on a plastic mat.
Then came cubicles a/k/a “cubes”, the workstations that became the bane of many office worker’s existence because they could hear the conversations of co-workers yet all they could see were high metal enclosures.
The office furniture manufacturers have incessantly tweaked their products to accommodate employee’s various needs. Office chairs and desks were designed to be aesthetically pleasing, but ergonomically correct. In some workplaces a whole-office ergonomic analysis was done on individual employee work stations to ensure that employees were working comfortably and without restrictions.