Wearable technology has many potential benefits for employees in the workplace, including safety, health, and motivation. However, there are also many concerns about privacy and the use of data from these devices. More research is needed to understand how privacy affects the user acceptance of wearables in the workplace. The purpose of this thesis is to understand how users perceive and accept wearables at work from a privacy perspective. The thesis studied wearable fitness trackers and evaluated the acceptance of these based on an extended version of the technology acceptance model (TAM). The thesis performed qualitative interviews with users who use wearables daily and presents the largest factors identified to influence the acceptance of wearable fitness trackers at work from a privacy context. The result of the research shows that there are three main factors influencing the acceptance of wearables in the workplace from a privacy perspective: User’s privacy and data disposition, the importance of transparency, and the importance of aligned subjective norms.

Many factors contribute to people's physical inactivity, but among the leading factors is a lack of motivation. Fitness trackers have been shown to encourage an increase in exercise, but they are frequently abandoned within a few short months. For this thesis I developed and asynchronous-play social gaming platform, FitPlay Games, to fill the gap in motivation left by current fitness trackers. By providing users with a variety of asynchronous cooperative and competitive gaming styles, this platform enable them to find a motivation technique that works best for their lifestyle and fitness prowess. The platform encourages prolonged use of fitness trackers, helping users to have more healthy lifestyles. Individual games are designed to allow both the novice and the maven to have a chance at winning, leveling the playing field, and increasing motivation to win. The effectiveness, usability, and enjoyability of the social games will be assessed, with an emphasis on understanding differences in play habits due to gender and lifestyle.

abstract: This dissertation presents reflective teaching practices that draw from an object-oriented rhetorical framework. In it, practices are offered that prompt teachers and students to account for the interdependent relationships between objects and writers. These practices aid in re-envisioning writing as materially situated and leads to more thoughtful collaborations between writers and objects. Through these practices, students gain a more sophisticated understanding of their own writing processes, teachers gain a more nuanced understanding of the outcomes of their pedagogical choices, and administrators gain a clearer vision of how the classroom itself affects curriculum design and implementation. This argument is pursued in several chapters, each presenting a different method for inciting reflection through the consideration of human/object interaction. The first chapter reviews the literature of object oriented rhetorical theory and reflective teaching practice. The second chapter adapts a methodology from the field of Organizational Science called Narrative Network Analysis (NNA) and leads students through a process of identifying and describing human/object interaction within narratives and asks students to represent these relationships visually. As students undertake this task they can more objectively examine their own writing processes. In the third chapter, video ethnographic methodologies are used to observe object oriented rhetoric theory in practice through the interactions of humans and objects in the writing classroom. Through three video essays, clips of footage taken of a writing classroom and its writing objects are selected and juxtaposed to highlight the agency and influence of objects. In chapter four, a tool developed using freely available cloud-based web applications is presented which is termed the “Fitness Tracker for Teaching.” This tool is used to regularly collect, store, and analyze data that students self-report through a daily class survey about their work efforts, their work environment, and their feelings of confidence, productivity, and self-efficacy. The data gathered through this tool provides a more complete understanding of student effort and affect than could be provided by the teacher’s and students’ own memories or perceptions. Together these chapters provide a set of reflective practices that reinforce teaching writing as a process that is affective and embodied and acknowledges and accounts for the rhetorical agency of objects. / Dissertation/Thesis / Chapter 3 Video Presentation / Doctoral Dissertation English 2017

Physical activities like walking have proven health benefits. People are adopting fitness trackers to track physical activity, but they often stop using them after a relatively short time. Many apps and games exist in the app markets that use gamification to tackle this problem of motivation. In this thesis, we examined these existing gamified fitness tracker apps from app markets and looked at the usage of different game elements within these apps. We conducted a systematic review of existing fitness Tracker Apps from Google Play Store and Apple App Store and used a mixed-method approach to identify apps, categorize them by different game elements used and found gaps in the design space using basic statistics, group clustering algorithms, and network analysis using NodeXL. We also developed a mobile game that combines step tracker data, a compelling narrative, and a strategic resource management mechanic with social cooperative-collaborative gameplay to encourage users to keep using fitness trackers and exercise more. It utilizes game elements and mechanics that haven't been explored by previous research or games as validated by our results from the systematic review of gamified fitness tracker apps.

Smartwatch is a technological product that has rekindled a lot of interest worldwide and areseen to be connected to our day-to-day lives. The recent growth on the adoption of thesmartwatch has posed challenges to researchers and other interest groups. Humans now live inmodern scientific societies that are heavily reliant on numerous smart devices of which thesmartwatch is a part of it. Past research has been done on the smartwatch phenomenon and itsassociated question that surround it. In this paper, we seek answers to the vital questionsbordering the usage of smartwatch and how those factors that are responsible for the increasein adoption of the smartwatch . The grounded theory research designed was used as ourmethodological approach and data were collected from twenty participants, some living inSweden and some in Norway. Analysis of data is also based upon, and informed by, theguidelines of grounded theory data coding steps. Further open coding & axial coding techniqueswere applied in data analysis section. Analysis of the data collected from the interviewsrevealed some interesting areas of smartwatch applications today. It also presented an insighton how consumers of smartwatch think about the product. Results from this study will be usefulfor future researchers as well as smartwatch merchants and makers.

A dominant trend in cyberpunk scholarship draws from Fredric Jameson's diagnosis of postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism, using Jameson's spatial pastiche, schizophrenic temporality, and waning of affect, along with Jameson's characterization of Baudrillard's simulacrum to interpret postmodern cultural artifacts. For many cultural critics, the city of cyberpunk is thoroughly postmodern because parallels can be drawn between the cyberpunk city and the postmodern condition. However, very little work has considered the ways in which cyberpunk can defamiliarize the necro-spatial and necro-temporal logic of neoliberalism. This project moves away from more traditional disciplinary aesthetic methods of analyzing power and urban systems, such as interpretation and representation. And, it problematizes the biopolitical present in three different ways. First, by weaving in and out of an analysis of the narratives, discourses, and spatio-temporalities of cyberpunk and neoliberalism, I seek to produce epistemological interferences within these genres/disciplines, and thus, to disrupt the conceptual and lived biopolitical status-quo of late-capitalism. The goal is to open the door for discomfort with and a critical awareness of the necrotic conditions of competition by highlighting the fictive nature of neoliberalism. Second, this study problematizes accelerationism as a viable alternative to leftist politics and suggests in the end that accelerationism is a form of neoliberal resilience. It does this through an analysis of the biohacker that reframes this subject in terms of accelerationism and the logic of intensity. I argue that the biohacker is the accelerationist subject Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek advocate for in their "Accelerationist Manifesto," suggesting that this accelerationist subject is, in the end, a neoliberal subject that fits easily within the conditions of competition. This study argues that the biohacker in its numerous forms reflects an underlying pure neoliberalism at work within accelerationism and its neoliberal governmentalities. I suggest that far from being an alternative to leftist politics, accelerationism may further the goals of neoliberalism in its desire to accelerate to a purified market space. And, finally, this study works towards offering a biopolitics that theorizes death in terms of ordinariness and suggests that biopolitics is still a useful analytic within neoliberalism. In other words, Foucault's biopolitics can do more than theorize a genealogy of biological racism and genocide. Rather than advocate for moving beyond biopolitics, this study argues instead that neoliberal biopolitics can still be understood in terms of Foucault's analytic, and that perhaps, we need to disentangle Foucault's work from Achille Mbembe's "Necropolitics." / Doctor of Philosophy / A dominant trend in cyberpunk scholarship draws from Fredric Jameson’s diagnosis of postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism, using Jameson’s spatial pastiche, schizophrenic temporality, and waning of affect, along with Jameson’s characterization of Baudrillard’s simulacrum to interpret postmodern cultural artifacts. For many cultural critics, the city of cyberpunk is thoroughly postmodern because parallels can be drawn between the cyberpunk city and the postmodern condition. However, very little work has considered the ways in which cyberpunk can defamiliarize the necro-spatial and necro-temporal logic of neoliberalism. This project moves away from more traditional disciplinary aesthetic methods of analyzing power and urban systems, such as interpretation and representation. It problematizes the biopolitical present in three different ways. First, by weaving in and out of an analysis of the narratives, discourses, and spatio-temporalities of cyberpunk and neoliberalism, I seek to produce epistemological interferences within these genres/disciplines, and thus, to disrupt the conceptual and lived biopolitical status-quo of late-capitalism. Second, this study problematizes accelerationism as a viable alternative to leftist politics and suggests in the end that accelerationism is a form of neoliberal resilience. And, finally, this study works towards offering a biopolitics that theorizes death in terms of ordinariness and suggests that biopolitics is still a useful analytic within neoliberalism. Methodologically, the project utilizes an interdisciplinary approach, pulling from political theory, genre studies, discourse analysis, and digital ethnographic research. Professionals and scholars interested in contesting neoliberalism will benefit from this study as it offers ways to problematize neoliberalism’s reality construction.

The ownership and demand for fitness trackers, smartwatches, and wrist-worn deviceshave been increasing globally. These devices offer various features such as measuringphysical activity, sleep monitoring, and health-related measurements like heart rate andheart rate variability using PhotoPlethysmoGraphy (PPG). However, research indicatesthat PPG measurements are less accurate on darker skin compared to lighter skin due to thehigher presence of melanin, a light-absorbing substance in dark skin.This thesis addresses the impact of melanin on the accuracy of heart rate measurements ondifferent skin colors using four commercial smartwatches, Apple Watch Series 5, FitbitCharge 2, Xiaomi Miband 3, and Sony mSafety. The study involves analyzing the accuracyof these smartwatches on individuals with varying skin colors while controlling forexternal factors. The collected data from the smartwatches are compared to a referencesensor that uses electrocardiography (ECG) measurements with electrodes placed aroundthe chest. Three different tests are conducted wearing the devices, with no movement,while walking, and with circular hand motions.The tests were conducted on twelve participants representing the 6 different skin typescategorized using the Fitzpatrick scale. With the presented results in this thesis, it wasconcluded that the 4 smartwatches' measurement accuracy does not seem to be dependenton specific skin types. Ranked in terms of Mean Absolute Error (MAE), the Apple Watchshowed the lowest value, followed by Xiaomi, Fitbit and the mSafety and that the accuracydid not depend on skin color. / Ägandet och efterfrågan av smartklockor har ökat globalt. Dessa enheter erbjuder olikafunktioner som mäter fysisk aktivitet, övervakning av sömn och hälsorelaterade mätningarsom puls och hjärtfrekvensvariabilitet med hjälp av PhotoPlethysmoGraphy (PPG).Forskning har dock visat att PPG-mätningar är mindre noggranna på mörkare hud jämförtmed ljusare hud på grund av den högre närvaron av substansen melanin, ettljusabsorberande ämne.Syftet med detta arbete är att undersöka påverkan av melanin på noggrannheten i pulsmätningar på olika hudfärger med hjälp av fyra kommersiella smartklockor: Apple WatchSeries 5, Fitbit Charge 2, Xiaomi Miband 3 och mSafety av Sony. Arbetet inkluderar enanalys av dessa smartklockors noggrannhet på personer med de olika hudfärger samtidigtsom externa faktorer som kan påverka noggrannheten kontrolleras. De insamlade data frånsmartklockorna jämförs med en referenssensor, Polar band, som använderelektrokardiografimätningar (ECG) med elektroder. Tre olika tester utförs med enheterna,utan rörelse, medan man går och med cirkulära handrörelser.Testerna utfördes på tolv deltagare som representerar olika hudtyper kategoriserade enligtFitzpatrick-skalan. Utifrån de presenterade resultaten i denna avhandling drogs slutsatsenatt de fyra smartklockornas mätnoggrannhet inte verkar vara beroende av specifikahudtyper. Rankade i termer av Mean Absolute Error (MAE) visade Apple Watch det lägstavärdet, följt av Xiaomi, Fitbit och mSafety.

<p>The last two decades have shown a boom in the field of wearable sensing technology. Particularly in the consumer industry, growing trends towards personalized health have pushed new devices to report many vital signs, with a demand for high accuracy and reliability. The most common technique used to gather these vitals is photoplethysmography or PPG. PPG devices are ideal for wearable applications as they are simple, power-efficient, and can be implemented on almost any area of the body. Traditionally PPGs were utilized for capturing just heart rate, however, recent advancements in hardware and digital processing have led to other metrics including respiratory rate (RR) and peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2), to be reported as well. Our research investigates the potential for wearable devices to be used for outpatient apnea monitoring, and particularly the ability to detect opioid misuse resulting in respiratory depression. Ultimately, the long-term goal of this work is to develop a wearable device that can be used in the rehabilitation process to ensure both accountability and safety of the wearer. This document details contributions towards this goal through the design, development, and evaluation of a device called “Kick Ring”. Primarily, we investigate the ability of Kick Ring to record heartrate (HR), RR, and SpO2. Moreover, we show that the device can calculate RR in real time and can provide an immediate indication of abnormal events such as respiratory depression. Finally, we explore a novel method for reporting apnea events through the use of several PPG characteristics. Kick Ring reliably gathers respiratory metrics and offers a combination of features that does not exist in the current wearables space. These advancements will help to move the field forward, and eventually aid in early detection of life-threatening events.</p>