V I V I A N G E N A R O M O T T I K E L LY C A I N E

C L E M S O N U N I V E R S I TY

HUMAN FACTORS CONSIDERATIONS IN THE DESIGN OF

WEARABLE DEVICES

Chicago, October 30th, 2014

HFES – Human Factors and Ergonomic Society 2014 International Annual Meeting

WEARABLE DEVICES

• Large potential • Variety of sensors • Several form factors • Multiple applications

2

LARGE POTENTIAL AND USE

3

POTENTIAL BENEFICIARIES

Owlet

[Kunze, et al. 2014. Wearable computing for older adults: initial insights into head-mounted display usage. In UbiComp '14]

WEARABLES

•  Large potential

• Challenging to consider Human Factors •  Heterogeneity of users •  Dynamic contexts •  Different wishes, needs, requirements, and

preferences

5

USERS’ ENGAGEMENT

6

USERS’ ENGAGEMENT

•  More than half of U.S. consumers who have owned an activity tracker no longer use it

•  A third of U.S. consumers who have owned one stopped using the device within 6 months of receiving it

[Ledger, D., & McCaffrey, D. (2014). Inside Wearables: How the Science of

Human Behavior Change Offers the Secret to Long-Term Engagement]

7

WHY?

•  Wearable devices have a low wearability •  sensor, battery and on-body hardware size tends to be too

bulky

[Pantelopoulos, A., & Bourbakis, N. (2008). A Survey on Wearable Biosensor Systems

for Health Monitoring, 4887–4890.]

8

•  Simply shrinking down computing tools from the desktop paradigm to a more portable scale only makes them into mini PC’s •  It does not take advantage of the opportunities

presented by a whole new context of use •  It does not regard the human body as a context

[Gemperle, F., et al. (1998). Design for wearability.

2nd ISWC]

9

PARADIGMATIC SHIFT

USERS: OUT OF THE LOOP

•  Design process not focused on the user •  Heterogeneous profiles •  Different needs, wishes, requirements, preferences •  Dynamic contexts of use

•  Their perspectives are often unknown or ignored

10

GOAL

•  Identify principles relevant to the human-centered design of wearables

•  Integrate human factors since early design stages of wearable applications

•  Impact users’ acceptance, satisfaction, sustained

engagement

METHOD

•  Systematic Literature Review •  Key design principles •  Successful wearable applications

•  Wearable devices •  18 form factors: “anklet”, “armband”, “belt”, “bra”,

“bracelet”, “contact lenses”, “chest mounted”, “earring”, “earpiece”, “glasses”, “glove”, “headphone”, “head mounted”, “necklace”, “ring”, “shirt”, “shoe” and “watch”

•  4 digital libraries: ACM DL, IEEEXplore, Springer, Google Scholar

•  Human-centered principles and quality factors

DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR WEARABILITY

• Wearability •  Degree of comfort: physical, mental, emotional, social

•  Encompasses a series of principles involving

•  Physical aspects of the devices and their relationship with the

human user

•  Human factors

•  Quality factors [Lucy E. Dunne and Barry Smyth. 2007.

Psychophysical elements of wearability.

In CHI '07] 13

PHYSICAL ASPECTS

•  Aesthetics

•  Fashion

•  Affordance

•  Comfort

•  Obtrusiveness

•  Subtlety

Sony HMz-T1

Polar band

HUMAN FACTORS

•  Ease of Use

•  Ergonomic

•  Intuitiveness

•  User-friendliness

•  Simplicity

•  Overload

•  Satisfaction

UV Ring

Smart watch

QUALITY FACTORS

•  Privacy

•  Reliability

•  Resistance

•  Responsiveness

•  Contextual-awareness

•  Customization

Glucometer

Glass

APPLICATION

17

DISCUSSION

• Wearability Principles •  Trade-offs •  Complementarity •  Overlapping

•  Extensive •  Prioritize

CONCLUSION

• Better defining wearability principles aims at helping designers •  To identify and consider users’ requirements since

the early design stages of wearable devices •  To improve their design

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

•  This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1314342. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation

REFERENCES

•  Cho, G. (Ed.). (2010). Smart clothing: technology and applications. CRC Press. Taylor & Francis

•  Kai Kunze, Niels Henze, and Koichi Kise. 2014. Wearable computing for older adults: initial insights into head-mounted display usage. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Adjunct Publication (UbiComp '14 Adjunct). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 83-86. DOI=10.1145/2638728.2638747 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2638728.2638747

•  Ledger, D., & McCaffrey, D. (2014). Inside Wearables How the Science of Human Behavior Change Offers the Secret to Long-Term Engagement (p. 18). Endeavour Research Report.

•  Motti, V. G. & Caine, K. E. (2014). Understanding the Wearability of Head-mounted Devices from a Human-Centered Perspective. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Wearable Computers ISWC’14.

•  Motti, V. G. & Caine, K. E. (2014). Human Factors Considerations in the Design of Wearable Devices. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2014 Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

•  Siewiorek, D., Smailagic, A., & Starner, T. (2008). Application Design for Wearable Computing. (M. Satyanarayanan, Ed.) (p. 74). Mor-gan & Claypool.

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