Designing Wearables with People in Mind

A Survey on Universal Design for Fitness Wearable Devices

“…A third of U.S. consumers who have owned one stopped using the device within six months of receiving it. Similarly, studies [6] [7] have found that many customers abandon their fitness devices because of various reasons, and those devices that are considered not helpful will be abandoned very quickly. In addition, users have kept complaining about particular problems in their wearable devices, including, e.g., poor device autonomy, data validity and robustness, allergy problems [25].…”

“…The extended lists [37] proposed, have been applied to the design of FWDs. While Erlandson put equitability as a prominent principle that integrates other UD principles, when applying it to the design of FWDs, [7] proposes to adapt equity, on the base of the top place in Erlandson's hierarchy, as a preliminary step to support the positioning of a project's compliance to the UD principles. It further integrated all three layers of the Erlandson's model in an iterative cycle and showed the layers can proceed during evaluation (see Figure 3).…”

“…3. Iterative workflow adapted from Erlandson model [7] with a "compass," one goes into the process-related principles where top-level principles are restricting her. Next, moving to human factors principles and being again restricted by toplevel principles, she goes back to the transcending principle with new knowledge and starts a new iteration.…”

“…Nevertheless, FWDs do not satisfy the consumers to a degree as they are supposed to be. Studies [6] [7] have found that many customers abandon their fitness devices very quickly because of various reasons as they are considered not helpful. At the same time, users have kept complaining about particular problems in their wearable devices.…”