Meet the Fleet: Professor Linder Comments on New BART Seating

BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT (BART) NEWS -- Martin S. Linder, a professor in the School of Design and Industry at San Francisco State University and an internationally recognized expert in industrial design, said it’s not surprising that seating design is a top concern of riders. “This is the kind of stuff the public interfaces with,” said Linder, who has no connection with BART. “Seating is personal.” Linder, also founder and CEO of MSL Design, consults for the Herman Miller furniture company on the design of seating in hospitals — another setting where seating is important. He said in both health-care and public-transit settings, there are practical concerns such as having easy-to-clean surfaces for sanitation, but that comfort has a non-trival role to play, also. "The materials that you choose matter," he said. "They have to be easily cleaned, with density and rigidity to sustain a lot of use but to provide empathy to the body. We are not computers. We are made of tissue and bones.”