Interaction with wearable computers: Challenges and perspectives

Thanks to the availability of powerful miniaturized electronic components, this last decade has seen the popularization of small mobile devices such as smartphones, and even smaller devices for wearable computing. The unique advantages of these new devices (small size, always available) open a lot of new possibilities in terms of usage. However, these same advantages turn out to be limitations for interaction. The way users will interact with wearable devices greatly depends on the affordance of the devices but also on the context of use. This context will either reduce the attention available to interact with the device or constrain the gestures users can do for input. In the same way, the environment will degrade the transmission of information from the device to the user. This talk will thus present the new challenges raised by wearable computers and how to take advantage of them.