I know from my own experiences working at home under lockdown that I’ve slouched and leaned and sat in all sorts of awkward, ergonomically ill-advised, ways. Partially this is from laziness. Partially it is from moving all around the house and sometimes working from my office, sometimes from the lounge, sometimes outside. Partially it’s from the tedium and struggling to remain engaged in never-ending Microsoft Teams meetings whereby working from home turned out to be more face-to-face time than ever before.

CZUR is a global technology company based in Shenzhen, China, focusing on creating smart office appliances to improve work efficiency both in commercial and home offices. CZUR is committed to using the latest technologies in digitisation and archiving and has previously run four successful crowd-funding campaigns for smartbook scanners, raising over $6.5 million from 27,000 backers around the globe.

Their latest product is the CZUR Mirror, a smart AI posture corrector which is available for $US 69 through Indiegogo. It’s a handsome little unit that sits on your desk and keeps a trusty eye on how you are sitting. As soon as your head drops because you’re slouching, leaning, or whatever other bad thing you might be doing it will emit a beep to remind you to sit up again, or verbally instruct you to do so, depending on your preference.

The device uses CZUR's AI chip to observe your posture via a small camera and to determine if you are sitting straightly or not. All processing is on the device; it does not connect to the Internet. You can start using it immediately, but you can also use a free companion app to customise options like your preferred modes and notification method, to set reminders, and to generate a sitting posture report.

There is nothing to wear, and beyond ensuring the device is charged and sitting on your desk facing you, there’s no further complexity or setup. It’s designed to discretely train you to sit properly by responding to its subtle chimes.

The CZUR Mirror can help you form correct sitting habits without even noticing. Or, it may prompt you to do other things. In my case I noticed during video calls I was always leaning over, facing into my laptop. With a trial CZUR Mirror I became conscious of how often I was doing this and set up a USB dock so I could work with external peripherals like a monitor, keyboard, and mouse when at my desk. Then, because I wasn’t using the laptop keyboard or trackpad, I positioned it higher so it was closer to eye level.

Healthwise, this was a good thing - and had I been in a pre-pandemic office environment no doubt the office work health and safety officer would have chastised me already. CZUR has effectively replaced the safety officer with a digital equivalent, kindly and subtly teaching me to improve my ways.

Give it a look; as simple as it sounds, this could be the device that keeps you fit and healthy when spending long times at the keyboard. It’s so small you can carry it in your laptop bag or pocket and take it with you too.

See it in action here: