Launch HN: Zen (YC S21) – Posture-correcting software via webcam
Alex started coding when he was 11 years old and eventually developed a severe case of "forward head posture" (a.k.a. nerd/text neck), a postural deformity that's often caused by unhealthy habits like slouching while coding. He created prototypes of Zen in his college dorm room at the University of St. Andrews to help with his posture. A couple of Alex's classmates saw him using the app throughout lectures and asked if they could test it out. After more feedback from his classmates he took advantage of an opportunity to move to San Francisco, California to work more on the project. We met at our co-living space and are still roommates today.
I (Daniel) went from playing football and doing splits at Yale University (https://storage.thephapp.com/split%281%29.gif) to terrible low back pain and carpal tunnel for over 8 hours a day from working hunched over my computer at Adobe. Eventually I met with an ergonomist at Adobe to get support. Ironically, Alex told me about the project when I got home that day. I tried out his prototype, loved it, and we came together to build Zen.
Here's how it works: The app takes video stream as input via your webcam (without recording or storing anything) and utilizes a locally stored computer vision model that analyzes the video to find and output key posture points/indicators (joints, nose, ears, etc.). These posture points are fed to a mathematical model that constantly compares your current posture position to the original baseline posture position that you set as your "healthy posture" position when starting the app. In addition, the app applies geometrical formulas to vectors formed by your current posture position and your original baseline healthy posture position to determine if you're slouching.
Your current posture position is displayed to you through a blue avatar named Zen that mirrors your posture in real-time. Zen sits in your menu bar (tray menu) and turns red when you slouch. Whenever you slouch for an extended period of time, you get alerted through a visual notification and/or an audio alert. The alert will go away when you move back to your original baseline "healthy" position.
The majority of our users leave Zen on throughout their workday, but our initial studies show that users see significant health benefits from using the app for just 10 minutes a day during short "posture sessions". Posture session reminders, slouch alerts, and other important settings can be customized to ensure that they align with your work style. The app is currently available for Mac and Windows.
We're offering a deal to the HN community (https://www.yayzen.com): Annual - $23.99/year with 7-day free trial (normally $69.99/year) Monthly - $3.99/month with 7-day free trial (normally $12.99/month). You can see a demo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll5UB-bpbic.
Our core business model is focused on selling to companies that offer Zen to employees as a benefit/perk (similar to Calm/Headspace).
We would love your feedback on the user experience and to hear more about any workday health pain points you have! Happy to offer any guidance on choosing the right chair, mouse, keyboard, and other equipment. I'll be here all day, cheers!
42 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 50.5 ms ] threadUsing a posture correcting garment or brace will actually make your muscles weaker, since they rely on external force to maintain your posture. This is very detrimental long-term and has a negative effect on your back health and overall health. They also don't help you build good posture habits, since you just have good posture while wearing a brace, but when you take it off, you're very likely to have bad posture again.
;)
I'd encourage folks here to check out programs like Egoscue, Alexander Technique, Gokhale method, etc for a more 'holistic' (quotes cuz its such a vague buzzword in health/wellness).
I'm halfway thru Egoscue and it's been amazing for beginning to restore my mobility from when I was a kid, but people should do their own research.
https://www.posture-minder.com
> https://www.posture-minder.com
Big advantage of that one, for the price of a yearly subscription of this one, you can have a perpetual license for postureminder!
Personally, I'd much moreso prefer a self-hosted option such as a desktop application with strong guarantees about limits on cloud upload over anything cloud-based for this use case, specifically around concerns about how the webcam data could be used/abused. I don't see any immediate FAQ page or somewhere I could determine this information. Not seeing this information gives me some immediate pause in trying out your application or signing up.
Similarly in addition to some discussion in your FAQs etc. around the limits of how the webcam imagery is used, I would personally love and feel more trust in the product if the FAQs could provide any data or transparency on how the training corpus takes into account issues of proper representation across ppl with different posture considerations (scoliosis comes to mind) as well as the overall representation of different demographics (race, age, gender) within that training set, and/or how the model training procedure defines or determines "correct" posture.
Those are great ideas. We'll be adjusting our website to make it more clear!
However, if the adjustments you describe could sufficiently allay my concerns and make the proper guarantees then I would be interested in such a product potentially.
As it stands I feel without said information there's just too much risk and uncertainty both as a private individual and employee to use this app.
* If I click on the web site, there is no privacy policy given. It just links back to the front page (Chrome)
* Anything with a subscription has got to send some data somewhere.
* All the language about "privacy-centric" with on actual background looks really sketchy.
Would you trust a small, unknown company to have access to your web cam? My experience is that few enough companies follow their own privacy policies.
Probably hard to implement, but have you considered anything like that? I imagine it'd be quite a nice subtle hint, that you'd subconsciously correct for even.
Just seeing/reading this submission made me correct my posture though, thanks :/.
In perfect world one would made it offline, release it at fixed price and be done with it, in our imperfect world it is turned in infinite cash-cow that requires connectivity and bazillion metrics.
[0] https://medium.com/tensorflow/real-time-human-pose-estimatio...
[1] https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs-models/blob/master/posene...
While we do use the 'posenet' library, this is around 25% of what goes on in the app during a 'posture session' - we need to actually label the multitude of positions that users can be in and we also need to calculate the degree to which users are in those positions. Moreover, we also offer walk breaks, exercise breaks and (ergonomic) educational videos that are really popular among our users.
Thank you for your comment!
But you don't support Linux?
We have users with long hair that covers their ears or users that wear headphones that go over their ears and head and they use the app perfectly fine. One thing that can affect the accuracy of the algorithms is the lighting in the room - poor or extremely strong lighting in some cases can lead to slight inaccuracies.