Measuring the Effectiveness of User Interventions in Improving the Seated Posture of Computer Users

Abstract

Abstract. Extended periods of time sitting in front of a computer give rise to risks of developing musculoskeletal disorders. In the workplace, computer use contributes considerably to employee injury and results in significant costs to the employer in terms of sick leave and injury claims. Due to these risks there has been significant research into the areas of posture classification and subject intervention to improve posture in an office environment. The Kinect TM has been shown to be a suitable hardware platform for posture classification. This paper presents a system for posture classification and novel subject intervention that leverages each of three distinct forms of persuasive computing and explores the success of each type. Our results show significant improvement in posture results from the most effective of our intervention types.

A Low Cost Posture Monitoring System Based on an Ambient Light Sensor Network

“…A variety of ergonomic systems have been proposed to improve the sitting conditions such as a smart chair based system [2]. Active interventions to remind users of poor posture have proven beneficial [3]. In [4], a smart chair system with in-built sensors can provide such feedback to workers with an accuracy of about 80% , but the hardware and computation cost is relatively high.…”