Graphical Notification to Maintain Good Posture during Visual Display Terminal Work

Visual Display terminal (VDT) work typically results in low-level static back, shoulder and neck muscles loading, as well as static spine loading. Improving sitting posture can reduce such loadings. We developed a posture notification system to make a user aware of poor posture by displaying illustrations of problematic posture. The proposed system encourages motivation through competition using a feature that allows users to share their sitting posture and posture score with other users. In an experiment, six participants were asked to perform everyday VDT work using the proposed system. The experimental results indicated that the proposed system made participants aware of their poor posture However, the proposed system was not effective at motivating participants to maintain good posture. To motivate participants to maintain a good posture, we must adopt additional self-competition and normalization features.