Background: The rapid growth and increased competition in today’s technology industry leads to a growth in consumers’ expectations on new presented products. One of the growing markets within the technology sector are wearable devices – especially smartwatches. Almost all major IT and electronic giants such as Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and Google offer smartwatches – competition is increasingly growing. Consumers benefit from the wide variety of choices while selecting a smartwatch – but what are the factors that influence them to purchase such a device?                                     Purpose: This thesis investigates the intention of German consumers to purchase smartwatches and examines the influencing factors.                  Method: In order to meet the purpose of this thesis, the authors conducted a quantitative study. The data was collected by means of an online questionnaire among German consumers and was distributed via the messenger application WhatsApp. To ensure the collection of enough responses the authors chose to apply a non-probability snowball sampling approach. Beside demographical questions and two introductory questions concerning the knowledge and the usage of smartwatches, the questionnaire consisted of eight question blocks that have been developed based on two well-established models to predict human behavior and technology adoption: Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).                     Conclusion:             The results of this study provide empirical evidence that the attitude towards using was the strongest predictor for the intention to purchase smartwatches. The outcomes further show that the attitude is influenced by the two hedonic factors perceived enjoyment and design aesthetics as well as by the utilitarian factor perceived usefulness. Out of those three factors perceived enjoyment was found to exert the strongest influence on attitude. Contrary to previous research, the results of this study could not reveal a significant influence of subjective norms on purchase intention. However, beside the attitude, perceived behavioral control was also found to influence purchase intention. The findings of this research allowed to draw a variety of theoretical and managerial implications as well as to develop possible research opportunities for future studies.

Aggressive motion can occur in clinical and elderly care settings with people suffering from dementia, mental disorders, or other conditions that affect memory. Since identifying the nature of the event can be difficult with people who have memory and communication issues, other methods to identify and record aggressive motion would be useful for care providers to reduce re-occurrences of this activity. A wearable technology approach for human activity recognition was explored in this thesis to detect aggressive movements. This approach aims to provide a means to identify the person that initiated aggressive motion and to categorize the aggressive action. The main objective of this thesis was to determine the effectiveness of smartwatch accelerometer and gyroscope sensor data for classifying aggressive and non-aggressive activities. 30 able-bodied participants donned two Microsoft Bands 2 smartwatches and performed an activity circuit of similar aggressive and non-aggressive movements. Statistical and physical features were extracted from the smartwatch sensors signals, and subsequently used by multiple classifiers to determine on a machine learning platform six performance metrics (accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, F-score, Matthews correlation coefficient). This thesis demonstrated: 1) the best features for a binary classification; 2) the best and most practical machine learning classifier and feature selector model; 3) the evaluation metrics differences between unilateral smartwatch and bilateral smartwatches; 4) the most suitable machine learning algorithm for a multinomial classification.

Physical inactivity is a major cause of disease in the United States and globally. Effective physical activity interventions often use community based approaches due to the demonstrated effectiveness of combining individual and group based behavioral strategies towards encouraging physical activity behaviors and influencing social norms. Such interventions can increase their impact by adopting technology based solutions to facilitate the underlying behavioral strategies. Current technologies for persuading physical activity primarily focus on facilitating the individual level behavioral strategies and de-emphasize the interpersonal aspects. This dissertation focuses on the development and evaluation of technology that is aimed at facilitating group dynamics-based strategies for promoting physical activity within small socially connected teams. This dissertation introduces a multi-component smartwatch-centered system (FitAware) that uses sensors to automatically track physical activity and leverages the advantages of the watch form factor to facilitate both group and individual level behavioral strategies via non-interruptive, glanceable, and frequent feedback updates. This manuscript describes the design and evaluation of FitAware in the context of an 8 week statewide physical activity community-based intervention, culminating in guidelines for system development that have been tested in educational settings. / Ph. D. / Physical inactivity is a major cause of disease around the world. A good way to tackle this challenge is to conduct community-based physical activity interventions because of their effectiveness in the use of both individual and social approaches for influencing behaviors. An important challenge with such interventions is increasing their impact on the communities. Mobile technology can be used as a platform that can help reach more people. Mainstream devices for promoting physical activity focus on facilitating individual level behavioral strategies (e.g., how many steps one walked) and de-emphasize the interpersonal aspects (e.g., how ones steps compare to friend’s steps) which makes them less than optimal for facilitating the social approaches within community interventions. This dissertation focuses on the design, development and evaluation of a system that prioritizes both individual and interpersonal behavioral strategies for promoting physical activity. This work introduces a multi-component smartwatch-centered system (FitAware) that uses sensors to automatically track physical activity and leverages the convenience of the wristwatch information accessibility to facilitate both group and individual level behavioral strategies via non-interruptive, glanceable, and frequent feedback updates. This dissertation describes the design and evaluation of FitAware as part of an 8 week statewide physical activity community-based intervention, culminating in guidelines for system development that have been tested in educational settings.

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With a rapid growth in smartwatch and smartwatch audio technologies, there is a lack of knowledge regarding user needs for smartwatch audio experiences and how those needs can be satisfied through user-centered design. Previous smartwatch user behavior studies suggest that audio app usage is not a primary use case for the smartwatch. However, audio applications are increasingly incorporated into smartwatches, which leads to the question of the apps’ purpose, validity, overlooked contexts and use cases. This thesis aims to understand what kind of audio experience(s) a user-centered design process might generate for the smartwatch. The design process generated insights from smartwatch users of audio applications, that were used as design guidelines for Context Awareness, Micro-interactions, and Device Ecosystem. The resulting prototype HeartBeats considers Context Awareness with heart rate music recommendations, Micro-interactions with one-handed song skipping and Quickplay music, and Device Ecosystem with speaker access and phone battery support. / Med en snabb teknisk utveckling av smartklockor och tillhörande ljudteknik finns det en kunskapsbrist om användarbehov och hur dessa kan tillfredsställas genom användarcentrerad design. Tidigare forskning om smartklocksanvändares beteenden tyder på att ljudapplikationer inte är ett huvudsakligt användningsområde för smartklockor. Ljudapplikationer implementeras dock allt mer i smartklockor, vilket leder till frågan om vilket värde de ger och om användningsområden möjligen har förbisetts. Den här uppsatsen syftar till att förstå vilka sorts ljudupplevelser en användarcentrerad designprocess skulle resultera i för smartklockor. Designprocessen resulterade i insikter om smartklocksanvändares beteenden med ljudapplikationer, vilket användes som designriktlinjer för kontextmedvetenhet, mikrointeraktioner och ekosystem av enheter. Den resulterande prototypen HeartBeats nyttjar kontextmedvetenhetgenom att rekommendera musik med användarens hjärtrytm i åtanke, mikrointeraktioner med en gest för att byta låt och snabbstart av musik, samt ekosystem av enheter genom snabb åtkomst till klockhögtalare och stöd för att spara telefonbatteri.

This thesis investigates the relation between human and smartwatch by exploring the experiences of four Swedish long-distance runners who use digital technology to self-track their running activities. By examining the participating runners’ use of their smartwatches and smartwatch data as postphenomenological human-technology relations (Ihde, 1990), this thesis offers a perspective on the use of wearable self-tracking technology as augmenting human experience through digital data. The empirical material was gathered through semi-structured interviews with the participating runners. In the analysis of the material, a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software is used to transcribe and code the material following a concept-driven approach influenced by Ritchie and Lewis’ Thematic Framework Method (2003). The coded transcripts are summarized in thematic charts based on postphenomenological human-technology relations developed by Ihde (1990) and Verbeek (2008) along with an understanding of data influenced by the field of critical data studies and adjacent work (e.g. Iliadis & Russo, 2016; Kitchin, 2014; van Dijck, 2014; Edmond et al., 2022). The runner-smartwatch relations that are analyzed in this thesis showcase how the digital data produced in self-tracking practices become part of the self-tracker’s experiences by being incorporated in a runner-data assemblage. Viewing the runner-smartwatch relation as a type of augmentation relation (Verbeek, 2008), this thesis further suggests that the digital data function as an augmenting layer through which the running activity is experienced.

Abstract This thesis explores different ways of leveraging mobile sensing to understand how end users use and interact with their smart technologies, namely smartphones and smartwatches. These topics are extensively explored in other parallel research; however, numerous gaps still exist within the literature. The use of mobile sensing to collect quantified ground-truth information of device use in-the-wild is critical to collect unbiased experiences and usage traces. This thesis covers three main themes: (a) the way our affect influences our smartphone use, and how our smartphone usage can also be analysed from our usage habits; (b) revealing quantified exploration of smartwatch usage traits, and how these relate to smartphone use, and (c) novel ways to mitigate interruptions during smartphone or smartwatch use. The thesis begins by explaining the related work and the overall theme of mobile sensing and how device usage influences attention; it then proceeds to elaborate on the contribution of each included article to the overall scope of the thesis. The thesis then concludes with a summary of how the presented articles tie together in a broader scope. Considering the vast amount of research in this field by this thesis’ author as well as other researchers, this type of work can potentially improve the use of novel wearable technologies in the future. By the end of the thesis, the reader should have a broad understanding of what mobile sensing is, and how it can be applied to comprehensively uncover technology use as well as leveraging mobile sensing to enhance the use of technology. / Tiivistelmä Tässä väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan erilaisia tapoja hyödyntää mobiilikäytön tunnistamista ymmärtääkseen, miten loppukäyttäjät käyttävät ja ovat vuorovaikutuksessa älykkäiden teknologioidensa, esimerkiksi älypuhelimien ja älykellojen kanssa. Näitä aiheita tutkitaan laajasti muissa rinnakkaisissa tutkimuksissa, mutta kirjallisuudessa on vielä lukuisia aukkoja. Matkaviestinnän käytöstä kerätään kvantitatiiviset tiedot, jotka koskevat laitteen käyttöä luonnossa. Tämän tiedon kerääminen on kriittistä jotta voidaan kerätä puolueettomia kokemuksia ja käyttöjälkiä. Tässä työssä käsitellään kolmea pääteemaa; i) miten älypuhelinkäyttöömme vaikuttaa meidän mielialamme ja miten älypuhelinkäyttöämme voidaan analysoida käyttötapojen perusteella, ii) paljastaa älykellon käyttöominaisuuksien määrälliset tutkimukset ja miten nämä tulokset heijastuvat älypuhelimen käyttöön ja iii) uusia tapoja lieventää katkoksia älypuhelimen tai älykellon käytön aikana. Työ aloittaa selittämällä siihen liittyvää työtä ja mobiilin tunnistamisen yleistä teemaa ja sitä, miten laitteen käyttö vaikuttaa huomiokykyyn, ja jatkuu sitten yksityiskohtaisesti jokaisen mukana tulevan artikkelin osuuden yleiseen käsittelyyn. Työssä päädytään yhteenvetoon siitä, miten esitetyt artikkelit sitovat yhteen laajemman kokonaisuuden ja ottavat huomioon tämän alan tekijän ja muiden tutkijoiden tämän alan tutkimukset, ja miten tällaista työtä voitaisiin mahdollisesti parantaa edelleen tulevaisuudessa käyttämällä uusia tekniikoita. Työn päätyttyä lukijalla on laaja käsitys siitä, mitä mobiili-tunnistaminen on ja miten sitä voidaan soveltaa sekä teknologian käytön kattavaan paljastamiseen että mobiilidatan tunnistuksen hyödyntämiseen teknologian käytön tehostamiseksi.

The smartwatch has been predicted to be the next big thing in the ecosystem of wearable and mobile devices. The success of the smartphone has a lot to do with the support from third party developers and their applications. This support will most likely be of utmost importance if the smartwatch is going to be successful. But what are suitable applications for this type of device? What are people's expectations and opinions on smartwatches? This thesis work delved into these matters with focus on development for the Apple Watch. This was done through an online survey that reached more than 1400 people, through a field study for one person that used the smartwatch as an air-travel tool and finally through a usability test conducted on five people that tried out several applications, most of which were developed for this project. Four different applications were implemented: a timetable application, a museum audio-guide, a game and an airline application. The results indicate that people generally expected the smartwatch to act as an extension for their smartphones and notifications seemed to be an area in which the smartwatch excelled. The results also show that there are many applicable areas the smartwatch can be used for, but that interaction with these should be kept quick and simple. This is extra important given the limited screen-size and special considerations should be taken on what content to display. / Smarta klockor har länge framstått som nästa stora insteg inom ekosystemet av mobila enheter. Succén bakom smarttelefoner har mycket att göra med det stora stödet från tredjepartsutvecklare och deras applikationer. För att smarta klockor ska nå liknande nivåer är det troligt att detta tredjepartsstöd är av stor betydelse. Men vad är lämpliga applikationer för detta format? Vad har folk för förväntningar på denna plattform? Det här arbetet har handlat om dessa ämnen med fokus på utveckling mot Apple Watch. Arbetet har gjorts genom en enkätundersökning online som nått över 1400 användare, genom en fältstudie på en person där en applikation för flygresor testats samt genom ett användartest på fem personer där dessa fått testa på ett antal applikationer för Apple Watch, varav de flesta av dessa var utvecklade för detta projekt. Totalt implementerades fyra applikationer: en tidtabellsapplikation för kommunaltrafik, en ljudguide för ett museum, ett spel och en applikation för flygresande. Resultaten visar att folk verkar förvänta sig att en smart klocka ska fungera som en förlängning av deras smarttelefon och det verkar som att notifikationer är ett väldigt bra användningsområde för formatet. Resultaten visar också att det verkar finnas många olika användningsområden för smarta klockor men att interaktioner med dessa bör vara korta och lätthanterliga. Detta är extra viktigt givet den begränsade skärmstorleken och man bör noga överväga hur och vad man presenterar för användaren.

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