Health sense: a gedanken experiment on persuasive wearable technology for health awareness

In this paper, we introduce a gedanken experiment for increasing health awareness in children through wearable computing. The proposed system, Health Sense, seeks to create a sixth health sense through wearable computing components that unobtrusively sense and ambiently present wellness information in intuitive and holistic ways to children. The novelty of this experiment lies in providing an ecosystem of plug-and-play wearable components that is geared towards health education and child empowerment through a "you build it" approach. Health Sense is informed by findings from prior research in wearable systems and a literature analysis of health behavior and children's education theories. We illustrate the Health Sense design by discussing some preliminary prototypes we developed.

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