Abstract
Wearable devices detecting users’ psycho-physiological parameters and providing related feedback are an important component of intelligent systems adapting to users’ cognitive and affective states. However, issues related to perceived comfort and privacy might compromise users’ intention to use them in real contexts. To measure users’ acceptance of these devices, we built a questionnaire that includes key dimensions of the TAM model [7, 15], such as perceived usefulness, effort expectancy, psychological attachment, facilitating conditions, and some dimensions that are especially relevant to wearable symbiotic systems (e.g., perceived comfort, and perceived privacy). This questionnaire was administered to 110 respondents with reference to three devices (i.e., smart -shirt, portable EEG system, and eye-tracking glasses) and six usage scenarios (dangerous work, heavy work, sport, homecare, research, retail).
After validation, 26 items were retained for the analysis and their factorial structure clarified. Perceived usefulness, perceived comfort/pleasantness, facilitating conditions, and attitude toward technology are good predictors of acceptance. The effects of scenario, device, and expertise are also discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
The retail scenario is a very common one in everyday life, so general users can hardly be considered as non-experts in it.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the European Project CEEDS (N: 258749; Call: ICT 2009.8.4 Human - Computer Confluence). The authors would also like to thank the participants and the following organizations: Associazione “La casa azzurra”; Centro sociale per anziani età d’oro; Comando provinciale dei vigili del fuoco di Padova; Siderurgica Ravennate Srl; Dipartimento Psicologia Generale, Università di Padova. The authors are also grateful to Enrico Tonini for advising about the statistic analysis.
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Spagnolli, A., Guardigli, E., Orso, V., Varotto, A., Gamberini, L. (2014). Measuring User Acceptance of Wearable Symbiotic Devices: Validation Study Across Application Scenarios. In: Jacucci, G., Gamberini, L., Freeman, J., Spagnolli, A. (eds) Symbiotic Interaction. Symbiotic 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8820. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13500-7_7
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