Questions to Improve Quality of Life with Wearables: Humans, Technology, and the World

Existing wearables mainly benefit to specialists and patients however they could also benefit to the general public, improving quality of life. To reach this goal, strategies for the development and implementation of wearables must be chosen based on careful consideration of interaction between humans and computing technologies, from multiple perspectives including cultural, economic, political, and ecological points of view. This paper takes up some of those perspectives by asking the following questions: What needs can wearables help fill? How do people perceive these technologies? What is the relationship between technology and human needs, and how can its understanding inform development strategies? What are the most promising services? What are the apparent difficulties? How do we design products? What can various demographic perspectives tell us? How do we ensure futureviability? Drawing on psychological theories, such as Maslow´s hierarchy of needs, as a framework for analyzing human factors our discussion presents results of interviews, questionnaires and experiments with prototypes, and raises questions for future research