A project oriented design and build course on wearable computers

This paper describes the design methodology and illustrates its effectiveness by evaluating several examples of wearable computers in respect to media types and degree of collaboration that they can support. Carnegie Mellon University has developed an Interdisciplinary Concurrent Design Methodology (ICDM) that takes teams of electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, computer scientists, industrial designers, and human computer interaction students that work with an end-user to generate a complete prototype system during a four-month long course. The methodology is web-based and defines intermediary design products that document the evolution of the design. These products are posted on the web so that even remote designers and end-users can participate in the design activities. We present a comparison of wearable computers and show that their capabilities have increased significantly. Important aspects include the types of data representation and the degree of collaboration.