The Multiple Dispositions of On-Body and Wearable Devices

When considering the design of wearable and mobile systems, a user-centered approach is useful, particularly if it focuses on tailoring a given application to a user's task. In doing so, it's equally important to account for the on-body aspects of mobile devices, which often remain on the person beyond a single moment of use. In this article, the authors present their work on dispositions, which provides designers guidance that can help them more fully account for the on-body nature of wearable devices. Using dispositions, designers can consider the tradeoffs between device capability and user requirements inherent in the different modes of wearable use. The authors illustrate the use of dispositions with two case studies and discuss the resulting design implications. This article is part of a special issue on wearable computing.

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