Language may be constantly evolving but if you want to see how a word can lose its meaning quickly, there’s no better example than watching the way some companies can misappropriate it in a misguided attempt to help them sell their products. For example, the big problem with the way some people talk about the term ‘ergonomic’ is that they use it to describe the design of stuff when really it’s about a relationship; that between a person and the things around them. It’s an abstract idea, dependent on a number of variables. And when those variables change, what we mean by good ergonomics changes too. Although the idea has been around for a long time, ergonomics first came to prominence in the wake of the intensive growth in the use of computers. That wasn’t really all that long ago, maybe 25 years or so, but already we are encumbered with a fairly fixed idea of what constitutes an ideal workstation and an ideal posture. We know the standards and directives, we know about training users, we know the sorts of environment people need and the products they should use and we know the consequences of failure.