Context
For individuals working from home, lines get blurred between work and home duties. While the home environment is not designed for extended periods of work, people make do with it while accepting the ergonomic discomfort. But over time, the discomfort translates into severe, long-term health issues. We decided to focus on monitoring body posture when working in home environments.
How might we spark posture and sit-time awareness for individuals working from home?
The concept
Boogie Woogie is a trainable, movement-triggered desk system that uses colourful moving blocks to help professionals working from home become aware of their posture. It enables them to sit better and nudges them to move more throughout their working hours.
The user can train the device on the bad postures they want to be reminded to correct. They can also set a timer to remind them when it’s time to stand up and take a walk. When the timer runs out, the device mimics the standing posture as an indicator to the user.
Prototypes
We designed and prototyped different shapes and forms in which this device could capture the user’s posture, learn from it and then return a visual/audible feedback to the user. Some of the other prototypes were centered around the concept of a metronome, a hand-fan and wings. Ergonomics, organic aesthetics, and clear communication of posture were foundational to our final design. Using these as our guiding principles, we finalised on posture blocks. The visual design was inspired by Piet Mondrian’s ‘Composition with Red Blue and Yellow‘ and ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie‘. The product also doubles up as a work space decor.
How does it work?
Boogie Woogie is made up of two block sets. The first block set is a detector that monitors posture by using two ultrasound sensors. It is an adjustable device that attaches to the back of the seat. The second block set is a displayer that unfolds in a shape that mimics the current posture detected by the first block set. It consists of three servo motors to enable its movement. It sits on the desk acting as a visual aid, alerting the user to modify their posture.
We believe that a small nudge such as this can have a lasting impact on people’s behaviour.
This project was done as part of the one-week Tangible User Interface course at CIID, along with my teammates Axel Jorgensen and Juliana Lewis. The design brief was to design a device whose behaviour could be trained by the end user to be more personal and which could also learn from the user’s behaviour through the use of simple sensors.
