Authentic User Tests in Industrial Wearable Computing Applications

Wearable computing means a paradigm shift: instead of working at the computer users are supported by computing systems in their primary tasks. Currently wearable computing is still a technology of niches and in a laboratory stage. However, with wearIT@work a 4 1⁄2 years project dedicated to wearable computing applications in industrial settings was launched by the European Commission. The first 30 months of this project are over and industrial demonstrators, evaluations and results are available. Results from user tests in two of the four application domains, namely production and maintenance, based on a newly designed wearable user interface are presented here.