Category Archives: Reflections (5985)

The expert I am reaching out to is Upright, a company that creates a wearable that vibrates when you slouch to remind you to fix your posture. I want to speak with someone at Upright because I have found them to be the most noticeable solution online, have read multiple positive reviews, and believe that I could learn valuable insights as they seem to have been successful over the past seven years.

Some questions I want to ask are:

• What have you learned about consumer preferences regarding wearables and price?
  • I want to challenge assumptions I made about consumers, that they do not want to wear a device and that the solution needs to be inexpensive.

• How do you measure your KPI’s?
  • The website has these KPIs listed in multiple places, I want to learn how these are measured.

• How did you test the product?
  • The website notes, “After an incredible amount of research, discussions with doctors, chiropractors, physiotherapists, and product testing, Upright was officially born in 2014.” I want to learn how they tested the product as I think it will lead to design, consumer, and scientific insights.

• How do you find and attract customers? I’ve noticed many videos and articles created reviewing the Upright Go 2.
  • Their most recent product, Upright GO 2 seems very popular online, having multiple articles and numerous youtube review videos made by third parties discussing it. I want to learn if this was purposeful and how this has affected the business.

Conducting a competitor analysis forced me to understand what current solutions are available and how they actually differed from mine. It would have been much easier to have “blinders” on and assume that people are waiting in line for me to release mine but as the competitive analysis demonstrated, this is not the case. I want to differentiate from MacBreakZ by targeting Baruch students who are less likely to have repetitive strain injuries but many still experience pain from improper computer use. Furthermore, I want to improve on personalization through a calendar integration and on activity tracking via the webcam. MacBreakZ has the competitive advantage of having a well-built product that has only required minor maintenance over many years. I have a feeling this will not be as great for students as I originally thought as I believe many students lay in their bed since the pandemic started and so it might work better for working professionals or other people, who are more prone to RSIs. That being said, maybe there is a way to better tailor the solution to students who are often in “non-traditional” workspaces such as their bed or couch. I think this is a gap in the market that is not being adequately fulfilled. MacBreakZ is also not available on Windows but Workrave is the next most similar competitor. The cons of WorkRave is that its UI is outdated and it has inferior timing personalizations and usage tracking. The questions that I now have are: is the white space large enough to justify building this product and will it be effective enough? Another interesting note is where I found much of my information from. For example, a teacher from CollegePrep posted a short video about ergonomic workspaces and mentioned it in the video. The unconventional places were important as Publicsquare.net,, the company that created MacBreakZ does not seem to be a large company and had limited information.

A billion users and growing, how does TikTok do it?

TikTok has taken the works by storm over the last year and has shown no sign of stopping with over one billion users worldwide. From my own experience, I think TikTok is the premier place for short-form content. Audio and video are more engaging/stimulating than either by themselves or pictures and TikTok has great length limits for its content. We saw the success of short-form video content with Vine a few years ago but its discontinuation left a hole in the market. TikTok improves on the short-form content with an endless scroll, viral algorithm, content creation features, and the creator fund.

If you download TikTok you’ll notice that within a few clicks you are immediately viewing content with one simple instruction, to swipe up and see the next video. This means that the user is immediately engaged and can scroll endlessly on the “For You” page. The “For You” page is the main Home Screen of TikTok where the videos you view are decided by an algorithm that updates based on your interaction with each video. I believe TikTok has created an environment where creators are all playing a lottery, to get on the “For You” page and have their video go viral. Something about the algorithm allows creators with zero followers to create content that goes viral and creators know this. To further add incentive, TikTok has a “creators fund” which pays out money to creators based on views.

TikTok has also Improved on the short-form content by allowing variability to the length of content (up to one minute compared to Vine’s six seconds) and with tools that encourage creators to build off of each other’s content. Creators can add a side-by-side to previously posted videos where they often react or reply to the video spurring interest in the topic. More importantly, are the sounds that are the backbone of the content. TikTok makes it easy to use the same audio of a previously posted video which causes certain audios to go viral where creators use the audio with their own twist, dance, or do something that becomes associated with the audio. Also, by reusing popular sounds which are often new songs by famous artists, scrolling on TikTok is to hear the most engaging parts of songs over and over, further increasing your enjoyment of the sounds. These tools all incentivize creators to create more content, ensuring there is endless new content to view. Every time you swipe up, it’s like playing a mini slot machine, your brain loves the idea that you’ll get something amazing like a hilarious video or useful piece of information, engaging your attention and causing longer viewing time.

TikTok makes money by running ads and through in-app purchases of coins which viewers can give to creators in exchange for digitals gifts. It is presumed TikTok takes a percentage cut of these gifts.

While there is much more to dissect about TikTok’s underlying technology and reasons for success, these are many of the reasons why it has become a key social platform. TikTok is a place where you can laugh, learn, discuss, discover, and more, and users and business alike understand it is the place to be for a chance at fame, money, and success.