Breakout

Abstract

We present BreakOut, a desktop system that infers an individual's posture, stress levels, and engagement with computer related tasks with the goal of recommending a break of sedentary behaviour at appropriate times. We present an Experience Sampling study that attempted to evaluate BreakOut's ability to infer users' posture and stress from a single webcamera as well as their engagement from keyboard and mouse activity. We conclude with the description of an ambient artistic display as well as an intuitive gestural interaction technique that enables the user to interact with BreakOut with minimal cognitive resources.

Digital Interventions to Reduce Sedentary Behaviors of Office Workers: Scoping Review

“…Several peripheral sensing devices with various form factors were incorporated in interventions reviewed, including cushions on chairs to monitor sitting time [53,56], wearables to capture activities and postures [59,89,90], and sensors attached to workstations to infer sedentary time from workstation use time [47,91].…”

“…Universal Serial Bus (USB) and other cable-based connections were often utilized in systems for which portability was not crucial. For instance, the studies by Van Dantzig and colleagues, Slootmaker and colleagues, Ferreira and colleagues, and Carr and colleagues [47,89,91,93] used USB-type protocols for sending environment-based sensor data to the users’ workstations, where the prompts were scheduled and delivered. USB protocol was also used in early prototypes of connected systems [56,94] to actuate novel user interfaces (eg, mechanically controlled sculpture and ambient light) from an Arduino, which is an open-source platform for creating interactive electronic objects.…”

“…Haller and colleagues [95] connected a posture sensing chair to 3 different types of media for delivering prompts (onscreen graphic feedback, tactile feedback from the chair itself, and physical feedback delivered by a plastic plant that became droopy to represent bad posture of the user); the result was in favor of the physical feedback, as it required the shortest time to return to the main task after the prompted activity and was rated by users as least disturbing. Along the same line of reasoning, several design studies assessed the technological feasibility, ease of understanding, usability, and likeability of ambient displays, such as programmable sculptures that changed shape [56,91], or ambient lights that altered color [94,96] to reflect users’ sedentary time and remind the user to take breaks. Nonetheless, although all the researchers suggested the need for longer-term experiments to establish the viability of their design approaches, no published follow-up studies were found.…”

“…We identified exploratory work on developing and piloting ambient displays to deliver break reminders subtly [72,94,96]. The technological advancements in the field of Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interactions presents new promise for this line of research, as mechanically controlled objects have been created [56,95] or designed [88,91] as a creative and pleasant way to persuade users into taking breaks and caring for their own health.…”