How can your webcam improve your health? Dept. of Social Work: Prof. Julie Cwikel Information System Dept.: Dr. Meirav Taieb-Maimon Prof. Bracha Shapira Mr. Ido Orenstein Mr. Dudi Ben Shimon Mr. Denis Klimov

Do you recognize yourself?

Work station characteristics: Long work hours Lighting Fatigue Visual overload Arm position Eating at the computer Un-natural sitting position

Goals of the research: To test the effectiveness over time of an innovative self-modeling photo-training method for reducing musculoskeletal risk among workers at computers. This was compared to traditional one-time ergonomic training (pamphlets, personal advice and workstation adjustments).

Method for Ergonomic Estimate of Posture RAPID UPPER LIMB ASSESSMENT (RULA) Scale from 1-7 (1 good posture – 7 poor posture) RULA takes into account a series of angles and deviations Additional aspects

Description of the Experiment 60 workers (51 from BGU and 9 from Soroka Hospital) working in different jobs (e.g. administration, research, programmers) Age range 26-66 38 Women and 22 Men At each participant’s work station a webcam was installed that photographed at random intervals approximately each 20 mins. 10-15 photos were analyzed each day Three study groups: Photo-training with personalized pop-up photos (intervention) Traditional office training Control

Pop-up personalized photo-training photos

Stages of the experiment Baseline Control Traditional office training Photo-training Intervention Control Traditional office training Photo-training (pop up remainder) Follow Up Control Traditional office training Photo-training Training One week break

Traditional office training Overall Results קבוצת Control Traditional office training Photo-training

Comparison between men and women Control Traditional office training Photo-training

Conclusions Personal pop-ups are an effective of reminding computer users to pay attention to their work posture and may over time, improve worker health.