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.