Is improvisation during collaboration a design choice? What is the difference between responsive inspiration and collaboration? Who is in charge of the artistic end result? And what influences the designer’s mood? These questions come across when investigating how to present wearable technology and the role of performance.

Recent years have seen the dramatic increase of wearable medical systems (WMS) that have demonstrated promise for improving health monitoring and overall well-being. Ensuring that the data collected are secure and trustworthy is crucial. This is especially true in the presence of adversaries who want to mount data manipulation attacks on WMS, which aim to manipulate the sensor measurements with fictitious data that is plausible but not accurate. Such attacks force clinicians or any decision support system AI analyzing the WMS data, to make incorrect diagnosis and treatment decisions about the user’s health. Given that there are different possible vulnerabilities found in WMS that can lead to data manipulation attacks, we take a different angle by developing an attack-agnostic approach, called Signal Interrelationship CApture for Physiological-process (SICAP), to detect data manipulation attacks on physiological sensor measurements in a WMS. SICAP approach leverages the idea that different physiological signals in the user’s body driven by the same underlying physiological process (e.g., cardiac process) are inherently related to each other. By capturing the interrelationship patterns between the related physiological signals, it can detect if any signal is maliciously altered. This is because the incorrect user data introduced by adversaries will have interrelationship patterns that are uncharacteris- tic of the individual’s physiological process and hence quite different from the ones SICAP expects. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in detecting data manipulation attacks by building different detection solutions for two commonly measured physiological sensor measurements in a WMS environment – electrocardiogram and arterial blood pressure. The advantage of using this approach is that it allows for detection of data manipulation attacks by taking advantage of different types of physiological sensors, which already exist in typical WMS, thus avoiding the need of redundant sensors of the same type. Furthermore, SICAP approach is not designed to be stand-alone but provides the last line of defense for WMS. It is complementary to, and coexist with, any existing or future security solutions that may be introduced to protect WMS against data manipulation attacks.

This work demonstrates the viability of the ballistocardiogram (BCG) signal derived from a head-worn device as a biometric modality for authentication. The BCG signal is the measure of an individual's body acceleration as a result of the heart's ejection of blood. It is a characterization of an individual's cardiac cycle and can be derived non-invasively from the measurement of subtle movements of a person's extremities. Through the use of accelerometer and gyroscope sensors on a Smart Eyewear (SEW) device, derived BCG signals are used to train a convolutional neural network (CNN) as an authentication model, which is personalized for each wearer. This system is evaluated using data from 12 subjects, showing that this approach has an equal error rate of 3.5% immediately after training, and only marginally degrades to 13% after about 2 months, in the worst case. We also explore the use of our authentication approach for individuals with severe motor disabilities, and observe that the results fall only slightly short of those of the larger population, with immediate EER values at 11.2% before rising to 21.6%, again in the worst case.. Overall, we demonstrate that this model presents a longitudinally-viable authentication solution for passive biometric authentication.

<div>The present study evaluated the feasibility and social validity of using a wearable technology to detect anxiety for educational purposes. Twenty college student who planned to take a Graduate Study Exam (GRE) for attending graduate school were recruited to participate in the study. Each participant completed a practice GRE with quantitative and verbal reasoning sections. The participants were asked to complete a demographic questionnaire and State and Trait Anxiety Inventory before the practice exam. An acceptability questionnaire was administered after the practice exam to collect data on the social validity of the wearable technology. During the practice exam, the participants were asked to tap a button on the wearable device to report stressful incidents (SI) when they felt the exam questions were causing them to feel stressed. The participants’ heart rate and skin conductance data were collected and analyzed with the timing of their self-reported SI. The data indicated that significant heart rate changes were detected in 66% and 70% of the self-reported SI in the quantitative and verbal reasoning sections, respectively. The results indicated heart rate data could be used for short-term anxiety monitoring for educational purposes in the real classrooms. The social validity data indicated polarized results for the acceptance of an anxiety monitoring technology for educational purposes. Participants with higher familiarity with wearable devices in general reported the wearable device used in the study less distracting during the practice exams. Participants with higher levels of anxiety reported being less comfortable with their physiological signals monitored during the practice exams. Implications and suggestions for future research studies are discussed.</div>

nuSense is the result of a degree work on master level at Umeå Institute of Design exploring why wearable technology oftentimes tread a rather narrow path, with many different companies releasing essentially the same product with a new shell, and innovation being slow. Through research, interviews and user research, hardware prototyping and testing it became clear that developing for wearable technology is a very complicated task, for many reasons. Being able to build quick exploratory prototypes was nigh impossible if you do not have a grasp of hardware developing platforms and programming. Further, those outside the industry who just want to explore wearable technology lack a platform to do so easily, aside from buying ready-made solutions made to do one single prepackaged thing. Based on this a concept was developed to provide a platform to explore wearable technology, through modular building-blocks and an easy to grasp interface.

The occurrence of total knee replacements is increasing in the United States for persons over the age of 45 because they are inexpensive and a very effective method for treating degenerative joint diseases. Rehabilitation requires regular access to a wide variety of resources and personnel and, as the demand for post-operative, rehabilitative care increases, the ability to marginally relieve the healthcare system by offloading resources to the patient is necessary. Tools to enable tracking a patient’s rehabilitative progress at home are an essential method to help unload the healthcare system. The purpose of this project is to design and develop a wearable home rehabilitation device for knee replacement. This thesis utilizes design ethnography tools such as expert interviews, rehabilitation observation, a participatory design workshop, iterative development, and an idea feedback study. Leveraging advancements in technology and the field of eTextiles, this study investigates the product feasibility and acceptance of discreet on-body sensors to provide a product that enables patients to better perform rehabilitation on their own, but also to allow for a feedback loop for physicians and therapists to view patient progress.

In this thesis we develop and test a software algorithm for an electronic smart badge system. The smart badge system we have developed has the ability to figure out the interests of people who wear the badge by using time and position information collected by the badge. The badge can also present feedback to the wearer, so that users may be guided to people will similar interests and so may have more effective conversations. The smart badge system is based on an inference system which uses a Bayesian network. Evaluation of the system was challenging because there were no completed badges that could be used. To overcome this, we developed a simulation of crowd behaviour in a conference setting. We tuned the parameters of the model using several test situations and the final simulated behavior appeared realistic. Compared to other smart badge systems, our work is unique because it is able to enhance conversation by the real time inference of common ideas or interests of the conversion participants.

This project explores design considerations and processes involved in the development of sports performance clothing specifically aimed at city cycling commuters. Research with a focus on smart clothing and electronic integration was used to form a technical framework in which the requirements of the end user were addressed. The result being the creation of a wearable electronic jacket containing a lighting system aimed at improving safety and comfort aspects affecting cycle commuters. The project methodology was essentially practice based with a strong experimental approach linked to the physical testing and refinement of electronic and clothing integration. Design aesthetics were equally important and are presented as a visual record linked to the use of computer related technologies which have influenced the design planning and processes of the project.

This project explores design considerations and processes involved in the development of sports performance clothing specifically aimed at city cycling commuters. Research with a focus on smart clothing and electronic integration was used to form a technical framework in which the requirements of the end user were addressed. The result being the creation of a wearable electronic jacket containing a lighting system aimed at improving safety and comfort aspects affecting cycle commuters. The project methodology was essentially practice based with a strong experimental approach linked to the physical testing and refinement of electronic and clothing integration. Design aesthetics were equally important and are presented as a visual record linked to the use of computer related technologies which have influenced the design planning and processes of the project.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Stan Anderson, committee chair; Nancy Floyd, Elizabeth Floop, committee members. Electronic text (55 p. : col. ill.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 6, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-55).