If you are suffering from back pains because of your bad posture, the Zen app can help correct that. Zen uses posture mirroring software that reminds you to stop hunching over the desk.
The app also sends alerts when it detects that you are not sitting up straight so you can correct your posture and avoid back problems.
Zen App Helps Correct Posture
The Zen app may sound easy to use, but the catch is you need to permit it to use your phone's webcam to check on your posture. That immediately raised some privacy concerns.
According to TechCrunch, Zen currently has 1,000 users, and it also has a version that it sells to employers. The startup has signed up around 30 companies, including over a dozen enterprises, since it launched the app back in October 2020.
Given the increasing growth in worker surveillance tools since the pandemic-triggered boom in remote working, there are a lot of reasons for privacy concerns.
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Many are concerned that employers will use the app to spy on their staff while working.
But Zen assures its users that it has taken a privacy-centric approach to building the webcam-based posture correcting tech.
This means that the company took some specific steps to reassure users that they are not being watched by it or anyone else as the AI watches them, according to TheWebServ.
The app's posture correction software is open source, and the AI processes the data locally, which means it does not need an internet connection to function, so users can verify for themselves that it is not uploading or streaming any data to the cloud by testing it with their internet connection disabled.
How Posture Check-In Work
Zen users can use the app how they want to. Some users do short posture check-in, around 30 minutes or an hour with the feature enabled, several times a day, instead of keeping it on all the time, according to Media Assistant.
The developers learned that users only need a short daily check-in to stay posture aware.
Daniel James, the CEO of Zen, said that they noticed that the majority of their users do not leave the app on all day. Instead, they do a short 30 to 60-minute posture session during their first work session in the morning and another one around 12:00 NN or 4:00 PM.
This correlates to how most people meditate as they spend a short time actively being aware of their thoughts which strengthens their passive awareness throughout the day. This works the same way for posture too.
James added that doing short small sessions every day increases your posture awareness and behavior change. Also, in user interviews, people often tell them that Zen is in the "back of their head even when they are not at their desktop."
From this analytical data, the startup decided to recommend that people start using the app for only 30 minutes a day during the 7-Day Posture Challenge. People saw great results in increased posture awareness and decreased back and joint pain.
In 2021, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science developed selfBACK app to relieve back pain.
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Written by Sophie Webster
