A technology company in eastern China designed “smart” cushions and gave them to its employees for their office chairs as part of a product study. The cushions were designed to monitor employee health. One of the key areas that the smart cushions monitored was posture. Analysis of employee posture was used to determine whether employees were possibly fatigued. However, the smart cushion also gave managers to other insightful data that revealed employee heart rates, and calculated the total number of minutes spent at work stations, length of breaks, and frequency of breaks. The smart cushions have raised questions about privacy and transparency in the workplace, and set off an online debate about the boundaries of corporate surveillance.
See "New Smart Office Cushions Enter Workplaces ", Tiffany May and Amy Chang Chien, The New York Times, January 15, 2021