A human-centered approach to the design and evaluation of wearable sensors - Framework and case study

As more wearable Smart sensors are used in e-Health applications the likelihood of clinical success is as much dependent on the clinical technology as the patient's acceptance to wear the sensors. By using a human centered design approach and a structured framework to engage the views of developers and end users, sensors have been developed within the OPTIMI project that were iteratively adapted to specifically meet a large number of user needs. As a result they are likely to have a higher user acceptance and low dropout rate during the project's clinical trials. This paper describes the approach taken and the results and experience derived from the project. The method has wider application to wearable ubiquitous computing.