Enhancing Proprioception and Regulating Cognitive Load in Neurodiverse Populations through Biometric Monitoring with Wearable Technologies

This paper considers the realm of wearable technologies and their prospective applications for individuals with neurodivergent conditions, specifically Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). The study undertakes a multifaceted analysis that encompasses biomarker sensing technologies, AI-driven biofeedback mechanisms, and haptic devices, focusing on their implications for enhancing proprioception and social interaction among neurodivergent populations. While wearables offer a range of opportunities for societal advancement, a discernable gap remains: a scarcity of consumer-oriented applications tailored to the unique physiological and psychological needs of these individuals. Key takeaways underscore the emergent promise of tailored auditory stimuli in workplace dynamics and the efficacy of haptic feedback in sensory substitution. The investigation concludes with an urgent call for multidisciplinary research aimed at the development of specific consumer applications, rigorous empirical validation, and an ethical framework encompassing data privacy and user consent. As the pervasiveness of technology in daily life continues to expand, the article posits that there is an imperative for future research to shift from generalized solutions to individualized applications, thereby ensuring that the spectrum of wearable technology truly accommodates the full scope of human neurodiversity

Understanding the Influencing Factors and Mechanism of Social Compensation for Chinese Older Adults Using Social Media in the Context of Smart Home: A Qualitative Analysis

As a new generation of necessary terminals for future homes, smart homes have become one of the essential mediums for smart aging at home. This paper aims to explore how older adults who age at home can overcome the digital divide of the new medium and achieve social participation in the home context to realize active aging. Based on the theory of social compensation, we select the smart-home smart screen, a representative new medium product in China, and carry out open coding, spindle coding, selective coding, and theoretical construction of the original interview data through the grounded theory research method. The results show that the main factors affecting the social compensation of older adults to smart home social media include user interface quality, interaction quality, content quality, and service quality, and these four factors are used as external variables to compensate older adults socially, thereby stimulating the emotional experience and perception changes at the cognitive level of older adults and then affecting the adoption and acceptance of smart home social media by older adults. This study refines the factors influencing the older adults' use of smart home social media from the perspective of social compensation. It explains the mechanism of acceptable behavior of older adults, bridging the gap in previous literature on the influencing factors and behavioral mechanisms of older adults of smart home social media. This paper provides a theoretical basis and guidance for the subsequent academic research and software development practice of social media under new technological devices to further help older adults in China achieve active and healthy aging

Acceptance of ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies among older Australians : a review of barriers in user experience

One of the great challenges facing Australian society is that of an ageing population. Amongst the issues involved in this drastic demographic change, the most significant aspect is the demand for older Australians to live independently at home. The development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies aims to address this issue. The advancement of AAL applications have been done to support the users with their daily-life activities and health concerns by providing increased mobility, security, safety in emergencies, health-monitoring, improved lifestyle, and fall-detection through the use of sensors. However, the optimum uptake of these technologies among the end-users (the elderly Australians) still remains a big concern. Thus, there is an elevated need to understand the needs and preferences of the seniors in order to improve the acceptance of AAL applications. The aim of this study is to investigate the barriers and perceptions in the use of AAL applications amongst older Australians. Focus groups and quantitative surveys have been conducted to provide a detailed analysis of these impediments. The results show that there are different factors that restrict the use of these technologies along with the fact that elderly people have certain preferences when using them. An understanding of these factors has been gained and suggestions have been made to increase the acceptance of AAL devices. This work gives useful insights towards the design of AAL solutions according to user needs

Health Wearable Tools and Health Promotion

The application of wearable technology for health purposes is a multidisciplinary research topic. To summarize key contributions and simultaneously identify outstanding gaps in research, the input-mechanism-output (I-M-O) framework was applied to synthesize findings from 275 relevant papers in the period 2010–2021. Eighteen distinct cross-disciplinary themes were identified and organized under the I-M-O framework. Studies that covered input factors have largely been technocentric, exploring the design of various health wearables, with less emphasis on usability. While studies on user acceptance and engagement are increasing, there remains room for growth in user- centric aspects such as engagement. While measurement of physiological health indictors has grown more sophisticated due to sensitivity of sensors and the advancements in predictive algorithms, a rapidly growing area of research is that of measuring and tracking mental states and emotional health.Relatively few studies explore theoretically backed explanations of the role of health wearables, with technocentric theories predicting adoption favored. These mainly focused on mechanisms of adoption, while postadoption use and health behavior change were less explored. As a consequence, compared to adoption mechanisms, there is an opportunity to increase our understanding of the continued use of wearables and their effects on sustained health behavior change. While a range of incentives such as social, feedback, financial, and gamification are being tested, it is worth noting that negative attitudes, such as privacy concerns, are being paid much more attention as well. Output factors were studied in both individual and organizational settings, with the former receiving considerably more attention than the latter. The progress of research on health wearables was discussed from an interdisciplinary angle, and the role of social scientists was highlighted for the advancement of research on wearable health

Continuously Healthy, Continuously Used? – A Thematic Analysis of User Perceptions on Consumer Health Wearables

Along with the miniaturization of digital devices, consumer health wearables (CHWs) further decrease the distance between users and devices, allowing users to continuously track their personal health information (PHI). While this provides more control to users, history has shown that users’ potential concerns (e.g. privacy) can lead to devices not meeting users’ expectations and failing market diffusion. The existing literature has mostly focused on particular aspects that could foster or hinder adoption of CHWs but the big picture is still missing. Drawing upon the previous literature, we use a rigorous iterative thematic analysis to provide a comprehensive picture of any potential benefits and deficiencies that users associate with CHWs. We take the example of fitness trackers and conduct 16 semi-structured interviews that help understand the determinants on which users assess the benefits and deficiencies of CHWs related to their continuous usage. We identify 11 subthemes that we can attribute to three main user determinants (perceived benefit, deficiency, and privacy). Our results not only show the failure to meet privacy expectations as a particular potential hindrance factor, we further propose a new theoretical construct (perceived relativity) as well as a novel tracking motive (social tracking), both of which can benefit future research on PHI disclosure. We enable both researchers and practitioners to uncover and visualize user perceptions of fitness trackers, on which future design decisions can be oriented and user expectations be better met. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol11/iss1/5

Factors Influencing the purchase intention of Smart wearable technology

A Research Report Submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Witwatersrand University School of Economics and Business Sciences, In partial fulfilment of the requirements of a Master Degree in Marketing, May 2017The consumer market of Smart wearable technology has shown a massive growth, therefore convincing that Smart wearable technology will be the next great thing, with market analysts forecasting its market to be worth over $30 billion by 2020. However this belief is mainly driven by major new technology manufacturers to produce Smart wearable devices that commoditise cellphones, tablets, and portable computers to influence consumer purchase intention. Consumers purchase intention is crucial for every business survival, therefore cannot be overemphasised. With the increasing number of Smart wearable technology brands on the electronics market, South African consumers have to make a choice on which brands to purchase. This study examines the factors influencing the purchase intention of Smart wearable technology in South Africa, with a special focus on product quality, design, price, and consumer attitude. From the academic side, the study makes a significant contribution by exploring the impact of product price and consumer attitude on consumer purchase intention. As a result, manufacturers in the wearable technology industry may apply this study information to develop proper strategies that will help influence more people to purchase wearable devices and ensure Smart wearable technology market growth. The study data were collected through the aid of a self-administered hardcopy questionnaire, which was circulated by the researcher in the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg. The research findings show that both consumer attitude and product price have a significant positive effect on the intention to purchase Smart wearable devices. Nevertheless, to be more precise, the effect of consumer’s attitude on purchase intention goes through the positive effect of a product design on consumer’s attitude. Both product quality and price are found to extend the effect of positivity of consumer’s attitude toward the product or brand, and the price tag of the product. These scenarios are fully supported in hypotheses one, two, and three. Although both quality and design positively influence product price, Product design is found to have an enlarging effect on product price. Generally, it can be stated that the design of a product successfully influence the price set for product.XL201

Accessibility of Health Data Representations for Older Adults: Challenges and Opportunities for Design

Health data of consumer off-the-shelf wearable devices is often conveyed to users through visual data representations and analyses. However, this is not always accessible to people with disabilities or older people due to low vision, cognitive impairments or literacy issues. Due to trade-offs between aesthetics predominance or information overload, real-time user feedback may not be conveyed easily from sensor devices through visual cues like graphs and texts. These difficulties may hinder critical data understanding. Additional auditory and tactile feedback can also provide immediate and accessible cues from these wearable devices, but it is necessary to understand existing data representation limitations initially. To avoid higher cognitive and visual overload, auditory and haptic cues can be designed to complement, replace or reinforce visual cues. In this paper, we outline the challenges in existing data representation and the necessary evidence to enhance the accessibility of health information from personal sensing devices used to monitor health parameters such as blood pressure, sleep, activity, heart rate and more. By creating innovative and inclusive user feedback, users will likely want to engage and interact with new devices and their own data

高齢者の健康管理におけるウェアラブルデバイスと中国伝統医学の役割

早大学位記番号:新8258早稲田大

Investigating different approaches and analyses of psychological variables to enhance sport and exercise

This thesis addresses the acquisition of knowledge through a logical step by step process during the PhD course, highlighting five research activities with a main focus on sport and exercise psychology. The ultimate goal for research looked at exploring wearable devices and associated digital technology to deliver interventions aimed to increase exercise while measuring psychological variables such as stress. A foundation was initially set with a systematic review and meta-analysis on correlations between physical activity and key variables such as self-efficacy, self-regulation, and anxiety measured using validated questionnaires. A continued interest in exploring psychometric tools and their validation in sport drove the analysis of a motivation scales and related parameters in a cohort of Italian rugby players. With the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, community-based sports activities stopped, and the way in which exercise was performed and measured rapidly changed, as I highlighted in the report “Physical activity: Benefits and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic”. In this unexpected scenario, government agencies as well as private entities and academic institutions applied digital technology to deliver health and wellbeing messages. The use of novel tools was beneficial while facing increased sedentarism occurring during restrictions and lock-down periods. The study performed, involving office workers and electronically delivering exercise interventions in the form of active breaks, showed improvement in wellbeing and stress reduction. Finally, the last study presented can be viewed as a marker in time, as people return to normality, exercising and performing their normal routine but with a new emphasis in keeping track of their own health and wellbeing through wearable technology, following the change in measuring physical and psychological variables consolidated during the pandemic. The results met the intended goal to successfully provide a message-based, digitally delivered intervention aimed at increasing exercise and reducing stress among university students, using wearables to measure the outcome. Moreover, the comparison of wearable-associated stress (based on physiological stimuli) with self-reported stress using a validated questionnaire (e.g., Perceived Stress Scale-10) showed a promising connection. I intend to continue in this direction to further explore benefits and limitations of digital technology in sport and exercise psychology