There are few of us that have not suffered bruises when battling with flat pack home and office furniture.

It's almost impossible for most of us to remember a time before the flat pack when home and office furniture actually arrived in the shape of the furniture piece you had seen.
Miles Richardson, a research officer at the University of Derby, claims:

"Flat pack furniture has taken off because it saves transport costs.  The construction process has been passed on to the individual, and they're at a disadvantage because they only do it once."

Miles Richardson is hoping that one day retailers who sell flat pack home and office furniture will actually use the boxes to rate their own products in terms of difficulty in assembling.

Miles has carried out experiments with his students and various flat pack items and using some crazy mathematical equations has managed to come up with his own rating system based on degrees of difficulty across a host of weird and wonderful flat pack items.

He was then presented a flat pack furniture item from a well known flat pack furniture provider to see what the general high street stores where supplying to the public, and he commented three minutes in:

"There's a problem with these instructions.  There's a lack of clarity."

When he was asked why some people are completely useless at assembling flat pack furniture he said:

"I wouldn't put it like that. Everybody managed to do the trial successfully. Some people made a lot of errors, but everyone got there in the end."