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Check out a more detailed post about what we are building here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28278618

We are launching our free beta program. We welcome any/all feedback and periodically host 30-minute Zoom user interviews. As a small token of appreciation for your time, we offer you a $50 Amazon gift card for the interview. Cheers!


Wow, I see so many great use cases


Thank you! Yes, feels like new applications seem to arise faster than we can consider the previous ones.


Awesome, yeah we mentioned it briefly but heart rhythm side effects are a problem for so 300+ drugs - antibiotics, pain meds, psychiatric meds. The list goes on!


The training set used has a lot of diversity. There is no training done on frames of the user - those photos are not stored, process or transferred in any way.

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.


Sorry if I am not understanding but you say the photos of user are not processed but aren’t the frames from the webcam stream processed to extract data about the users posture?


Zen is a desktop app so I'm happy to see that we satisfy your preference.

Those are great ideas. We'll be adjusting our website to make it more clear!


Yeah, thanks for being receptive to my feedback! FWIW I would not personally install your desktop app without further understanding of these other areas.

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.


Yeah, no.

* 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.


That's really interesting! Thanks for sharing this!


So far we haven't had people report issues or complain about the app or its performance. We also test the app on laptops ranging from really low range and old laptops to the latest MacBook or Windows laptops and so far we haven't encountered any issues ourselves. Electron has been really useful since it allows us to build apps for different operating systems, hence we can support more users who are looking for a solution like ours.

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!


> Electron has been really useful since it allows us to build apps for different operating systems

But you don't support Linux?


That's a really cool idea and I'm curious to see if it can be implemented. However, a lot of people use Zen while working, so I can imagine the tilt can become quite annoying, especially if you're in deep work.


To answer your first question, we constantly improve the computer and mathematical models to improve the accuracy of the 'posture session'. We also offer in-depth analytics about your posture tendencies and also provide and constantly update libraries of exercises and (ergonomic) educational videos. Moreover, we constantly develop new features that users ask for, that are meant to tackle other parts of your wellness while you work (i.e. walk breaks, exercise breaks etc.)

Using 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.


Makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to respond, I appreciate it.


For sure!


the student discount is coming soon! But we also have a generous discount available now for our launch.


great point! We're working to tie in long term posture restoration programs. What great/different is that you'll actually be able to track your posture improvements over time via the app


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