Show HN: I created a Chrome extension to help keep good posture while browsing

I appreciate the tech and effort that went into this, but the assessment criteria could maybe be given a few options to suit individual desires/needs.

(Plus I need one to tell me to stop standing too much, or standing but not moving maybe, after incurring some foot problems due to excessive standing desk use during covid lockdown)

However, my neighbour is a career academic with a PhD in human factors, and just last Friday was telling me he had been searching for statistical validation for twenty years that maintaining "good posture" while sitting was beneficial, and has yet to be able to come up with anything even vaguely statistically meaningful.

His take is, any sitting posture is bad for you, if maintained or preferred excessively.

Seems you are good however, as long as you change often enough to balance out or average out the various "curl up" and "stretch out/arching" positions.

This is unless you have a particular injury, or scoleosis etc and have certain positions you need to avoid.

Otherwise, just slouch around, but change semi regularly.

So it would be good if somehow it could tell you too much curl, too much arch/stretch, or too long in one position, instead of deviation from an absolute. But this starts getting complicated on first inspection.

The desire for "good" posture, along with many other things, falls into the category of "are you telling me something you know, or something that someone told you?".

Question everything.

Heh, I like this. But I also keep reading that simply holding "good" posture is not helpful, and that changing position (including to slouch, recline, rest on a elbow etc) protects against muscle spasm from holding the same position. I suppose this implementation could help with that too though. Slouch a bit, get reminded to lean back, repeat etc.

Super creative! Other people have mentioned the issues with static posture for too long, so I won't go there. But I like how you've set up the landing page. Easy to demo, straight and to the point. Nice.

Interesting idea. I wonder if it would be better if the camera was from the side instead of the front (I know this isn't really doable for most). The thought process here is, should there be a calibration routine to compensate not just for the height of the monitor but also the position of the webcam? As I write this, I am using very bad posture--slouching back, head craned forward, etc, but my eyes would be in the "green" area on a 2D plane. Two lenses would help a bit with depth perception from the front.. so two webcams.. one from the monitor's bezel and one from the external webcam.

Congrats on your launch. I just found that there was a company with similar idea made into YC. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28278618

Small idea can sometimes turn into something big. Keep it up.