Design principles for health wearables

Abstract

As wearables become increasingly prevalent, there is a concurrent and growing expectation that we use these devices to track and monitor our bodily states in order to be responsible "biocitizens." To mitigate this, some health, design, and usability scholars have advocated for greater patient control over health data. To support these efforts, this article offers a set of criteria for analyzing wearables, criteria that account for the handling of data and user connections via wearables as they relate to three priorities: accessibility, adaptability, and iterability. These are meant to support analyses that will clarify the ways wearables can more ethically serve end-users'---that is, patients' and wearers'---emerging needs, rather than primarily serving the intermediary goals of care delivery personnel and systems to monitor and manage patient behavior. To do this, this article addresses the usability of wearables as it relates to other critical care issues, such as "information integrity" and enabling patients to maintain their own health records and participate in shared decision making.

Resisting Surveillance: Responding to Wearable Device Privacy Policies

“…In relation to building access, there is a sense of community that is built by choosing to participate in using such wearable devices, while access is simultaneously broken in the ways that if the user does not agree to the terms and conditions (and therefore the privacy policies) then the user cannot access the technology. Ultimately, wearables must at some level allow users to control how their data is produced and disseminated [27]. For wearables to allow users to control how their data is produced and disseminated, another question must be answered: aside from lengthiness, why doesn't the general population read privacy policies?…”

“…As Fogg [17] argues, computing technology that assumes roles of authority will have enhanced powers of persuasion. As wearables become increasingly prevalent, there is a concurrent and growing expectation that we use these devices to track and monitor our bodily states in order to be responsible "bio-citizens" [27]. To mitigate this, some health, design, and usability scholars have advocated for greater patient control over health data.…”

“…To mitigate this, some health, design, and usability scholars have advocated for greater patient control over health data. Jones, Gouge, & Crilley [27] argue for a specific set of criteria that accounts for the handling of data and user connections via wearables through accessibility, adaptability, and iterability. Though others have suggested criteria for evaluating health applications [28], this pilot study seeks to understand the intersection of undergraduate students and wearable devices through their interpretation of privacy policies.…”

“…In other words, privacy represents our ability to control our own image, and determine who has access to what parts of our lives. More scholars [27,31] are calling for wearable devices to ethically serve patients' and wearers' emerging needs, rather than monitoring and managing user behavior. The word surveillance has always had a negative connotation in the United States [6].…”

mHealth Apps for Older Adults: A Method for Development and User Experience Design Evaluation

“…Scholars have modified and developed methodologies and methods for UX evaluation of health and medical technology beyond the traditional vacuum of the laboratory to address the interconnected contexts and embodied needs of users of wearable medical devices (e.g., Arduser, 2018; Jones, Gouge, & Crilley, 2017; Kennedy, 2018; Kessler, 2016) and a wearable fitness tracker (Welhausen, 2018). Implicit in these studies is the concept of the user as a contributor and practitioner in a complex design process (Dilger, 2006; Howard, 2008; Johnson, Salvo, & Zoetewey, 2007; Simmons & Zoetewey, 2012).…”