Problem space

 

Sedentary lifestyle

The WHO calculated that an hour of sitting shortens our lifespan by 21 minutes. This lifestyle affects our health badly, comparably as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day does. Lack of exercise is the fourth leading cause of mortality in the world. Research in Loughborough has shown that time spent sitting is associated with a risk of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease and death. Also, the load on the spine while sitting is 40-90% greater than when standing.

“An hour of sitting shortens our lifespan by 21 minutes.” – WHO

Already 70% of active people in Poland work mainly in a sedentary position. Combined with our 2030 scenario, which also involves spending more and more time at home, we saw that the problem of sedentary lifestyles would grow. We asked ourselves, “How can we activate sedentary people while working?

 

 

Our solution

 

Introducing Flowall

The organic adjustable surface that is fixed to wall. The surface adjusts to every part of your body. It allows you to achieve any position you need.

Due to staying most of the time in a predefined Metaverse, the key is what our position is and the ability to change it. Whether sitting, leaning, propping or even lying down, all these positions should not affect the user badly. It should also be remembered that you should change your position from time to time for health reasons.

The Flowall surface is meant to provide healthy body positions, correcting bad posture habits and changing the position configuration as needed. In the situation of spending too much time at work, for example, the device encourages a break by stiffening the surface and creating a vertical wall gradually.

Functionalities

Adjusting and adapting to multiple positions is only one part of how the device works. Another is the monitoring of blood pressure, thermal detection of the spinal system and, in the case of anaemic body parts, heating them up with our technologies. Knowing the history of our positions makes it easier to optimize positions and match them properly to the needs of the individual user’s body.

Technologies

 

AHEAD

The main goal of AHEAD is to build the possibility of sensing fluid parameters with a simple pipe segment to an industrial pre-production level, compatible with natural refrigerants.

We want to use AHEAD to detect posture change through fluid tubes placed in the flowall. The movement of the fluid drives the detectors to examine the amount of fluid in a given tube so that we can detect the human position and, in the next step, we can correct it.

HYGER

Detector converting infrared light waves into electrical signals. It is much more sensitive and less expensive in near-infrared and low-radiation detection technologies.

We want to use HYGER to detect the temperature of the human body, especially to detect ischemia body parts and warm them with infrared light.

Next steps

In the near future, we want to delve more deeply into the personas, the users – this means conducting interviews to learn about users’ habits and needs.

Quotes

“Practice makes perfect”