This document provides an overview of the history and development of wearable computing. It discusses early explorations from the 1960s through commercial uses in the 1990s. Key developments include the MIT Media Lab's work in wearables starting in 1993. Commercial products launched in the late 1990s, including devices from Xybernaut, VIA, and Symbol. More recent generations of wearables target both niche markets like skiing and broader consumer markets like Google Glass. The document covers topics like wearable attributes, enabling technologies, prototype applications, and experience design considerations for wearables.

1. Introduction to Wearables
Mark Billinghurst
HIT Lab NZ
December 2014

3. Room Desk Lap Hand Head

5. Wearable Computing
▪ Computer on the body that is:
▪ Always on
▪ Always accessible
▪ Always connected
▪ Other attributes
▪ Augmenting user actions
▪ Aware of user and surroundings

6. The Ideal Wearable
▪ Persists and Provides Constant Access: Designed
for everyday and continuous user over a lifetime.
▪ Senses and Models Context: Observes and
models the users and environment.
▪ Augments and Mediates: Information support for
the user in both the physical and virtual realities.
▪ Interacts Seamlessly: Adapts its input and output
modalities to those most appropriate at the time.
Starner, T. E. (1999). Wearable computing and contextual awareness
(Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

7. Wearable Attributes
▪ fafds

8. History

9. History of Wearables
▪ 1960-90: Early Exploration
▪ Custom build devices
▪ 1990 - 2000: Academic, Military Research
▪ MIT, CMU, Georgia Tech, EPFL, etc
▪ 1997: ISWC conference starts
▪ 1995 – 2005+: First Commercial Uses
▪ Niche industry applications, Military
▪ 2010 - : Second Wave of Wearables
▪ Consumer applications, Head Worn

10. The Gamblers
Ed Thorp (1961)
Belt computer
Glasses
Display
▪ Timing device for roulette prediction
▪ Card counting hardware (toe input)
Keith Taft (1972)
Shoe Input
Thorp, E. O. (1998, October). The invention of the first wearable computer. In Wearable
Computers, 1998. Second International Symposium on (pp. 4-8). IEEE.

11. The Hackers (1980’s - )
! MIT Media Lab – Wearable Computing (1993)
http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/

12. Enabling Technologies (1989+)
▪ Private Eye Display (Reflection Tech.)
▪ 720 x 280 dipslay
▪ Red LED
▪ Vibrating mirror
▪ Twiddler (Handykey)
▪ Chording keypad
▪ Mouse emulation

13. MIT Tin Lizzy (1993)
▪ General Purpose Wearable
▪ Doug Platt, Thad Starner
▪ 150 MHz Pentium CPU
▪ 32-64 Mb RAM, 6 Gb HDD
▪ VGA display
▪ Cellular modem
http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/lizzy/lizzy/index.html

14. Prototype Applications
▪ Remembrance Agent
▪ Rhodes (97)
▪ Augmented Reality
▪ Feiner (97), Thomas (98)
▪ Remote Collaboration
▪ Garner (97), Kraut (96)
▪ Maintenance/Factory
▪ Caudell (92), Thompson (97)

15. Mobile AR: Touring Machine (1997)
▪ University of Columbia
▪ Feiner, MacIntyre, Höllerer, Webster
▪ Combines
▪ See through head mounted display
▪ GPS tracking
▪ Orientation sensor
▪ Backpack PC (custom)
▪ Tablet input
Feiner, S., MacIntyre, B., Höllerer, T., & Webster, A. (1997). A touring machine: Prototyping 3D mobile
augmented reality systems for exploring the urban environment. Personal Technologies, 1(4), 208-217.

16. MARS View
▪ Virtual tags overlaid on the real world
▪ “Information in place”

17. Mobile AR - Hardware
PCI 3D Graphics Board
Hard Drive
Serial
Ports
CPU
PC104 Sound Card
PC104 PCMCIA
GPS
Antenna
RTK correction Antenna
HMD
Controller
Tracker
Controller
DC to DC
Converter
Battery
Wearable
Computer
GPS RTK
correction
Radio
Example self-built working
solution with PCI-based 3D graphics
Columbia Touring Machine

18. Early Commercial Systems
▪ Xybernaut (1996 - 2007)
▪ Belt worn, HMD, 200 MHz
▪ ViA (1996 – 2001)
▪ Belt worn, Audio Interface
▪ 700 MHz Crusoe
▪ Symbol (1998 – 2006)
▪ Wrist worn computer
▪ Finger scanner

19. Symbol WWC 1000 (1998 - )
! Wrist worn wearable + finger barcode scanner
! $3500 USD, current price $1000
! Over 30K sold in first 2 years, still selling (>100k units?)
! First widely deployed wearable computer

20. Reasons For Success
! Well defined large market niche
! Stock pickers with holster scanners
! Significant usability/ergonomics effort
! Over 40,000 hours user testing
! Provided significant performance improvement
! Met user needs, solved existing problems
! Addressed social factors
! Company with substantial R+D resources
Stein, R., Ferrero, S., Hetfield, M., Quinn, A., & Krichever, M. (1998, October). Development
of a commercially successful wearable data collection system. In Wearable Computers,
1998. Digest of Papers. Second International Symposium on (pp. 18-24). IEEE.

21. Second Gen. Commercial Systems
! Recon (2010 - )
! Head worn displays for sports
! Ski goggle display
! Investment from Intel (2013)
! Google (2011 - )
! Google Glass
! Consumer focus

22. Recon MOD/MOD live (2010 - )
! http://www.reconinstruments.com
! Ski goggle wearable
! Niche market focus
! Show speed, maps, phone calls etc
! $199/$299 accessory
! GPS location, orientation, sensor output
! Android platform/SDK
! Sales: > 50K units sold

23. Use Case
! While skiing
show:
! maps,
! speed,
! altitude
! phone calls
! text messages

24. Google Glass (2011 - )

26. Other HWCs
▪ Vuzix M-100
▪ $999, professional
▪ Recon Jet
▪ $600, more sensors, sports
▪ Opinvent
▪ 500 Euro, multi-view mode
▪ Motorola Golden-i
▪ Rugged, remote assistance

28. dsfh

30. Summary
! First wearable companies
! Targeting niche markets
! Expensive/poorly designed solutions
! Mostly low sales (< 10,000)
! Current generation
! First general consumer wearable (Glass, others)
! Bigger niche markets (skiing, sports) – > 50K+ sales
! Lower costs/better design

31. Market Analysis

33. Gartner - Hype Cycle
5 – 10 years to
widespread
commercialization
! 5-10 years to widespread commercial acceptance

34. Projected Market - 1

36. Total Number Wearable Devices

38. Wide Difference in Market Size

39. Key Companies

40. Summary
! Wearables reach mass market over 5-10 years
! Analysts disagree on projected sales
! Maybe 20 million devices shipped/year by 2018
! Up to $11 Billion market size by 2018
! Wearable computers small cf to other technology
! Smart glass around 10% of all wearable sales
! All wearable devices < 10% of smart phone sales

41. Experience Design

42. “The product is no longer the basis
of value. The experience is.”
Venkat Ramaswamy
The Future of Competition.

45. Using the N-gage

46. SideTalking
! www.sidetalkin.com

48. Experience Design is All About You
! Users should be
involved throughout
the Design Process
! Consider all the needs
of the user

49. Glass User Experience
! Truly Wearable Computing
! Less than 46 ounces
! Hands-free Information Access
! Voice interaction, Ego-vision camera
! Intuitive User Interface
! Touch, Gesture, Speech, Head Motion
! Access to all Google Services
! Map, Search, Location, Messaging, Email, etc

50. Living Heads Up vs. Heads Down

52. Lost in Screen Space

53. PHYSICAL

54. Physical Elements
! Interface design
! Input techniques
! Interaction metaphors
! Wearability/Ergonomics

55. Design For Device
! Simple, relevant information
! Complement existing devices

56. Typical Usage Times

57. Consider Your User
! Wearable User
! Probably Mobile
! One/no hand interaction
! Short application use
! Need to be able to multitask
! Use in outdoor or indoor environment
! Want to enhance interaction with real world

58. It's
like
a
rear
view
mirror
Don't
overload
the
user.
S2ck
to
the
absolutely
essen2al,
avoid
long
interac2ons.
Be
explicit.

59. Micro
Interac3ons
The
posi2on
of
the
display
and
limited
input
ability
makes
longer
interac2ons
less
comfortable.
Using
it
shouldn’t
take
longer
than
taking
out
your
phone.

60. Micro-Interactions
▪ On mobiles people split attention
between display and real world

61. Time Looking at Screen
Oulasvirta, A. (2005). The fragmentation of attention in mobile
interaction, and what to do with it. interactions, 12(6), 16-18.

62. Design for MicroInteractions
▪ Design interaction less than a few seconds
! Tiny bursts of interaction
! One task per interaction
! One input per interaction
▪ Benefits
! Use limited input
! Minimize interruptions
! Reduce attention fragmentation

63. Do one thing at a time

64. Make it Glanceable
Bad Good
! Seek to rigorously reduce information density.
! Design for recognition, not reading.

65. Reduce the number of info chunks
3
1
2
1
2
3
4
5 (6)
Reducing the total # of information chunks will
increase the glanceability of your design.

66. Single Interactions Faster than 4 s
1
2
3
1
2
3
4
5 (6)
Eye Movements: ~ 2 secs
Eye Movements: ~ 0.9 sec

67. Test the glanceability ✓ of your design

68. Don’t Get in the Way
! Enhance, not replace, real world interaction

69. Keep it Relevant
! Information at the right time and place

70. ✓ Test your design indoors + outdoors

71. Interface Guidelines
▪ Don’t design a mobile app
! Design for emotion
▪ Make it glanceable
! Do one thing at a time
! Reduce number of information chunks
▪ Design for indoor and outdoor use

72. Physical Input
! Interaction on the go
! Must support mobile input
! Fatigue
! “Gorrilla” Arm from free-hand input
! Comfort
! People want to do small gestures by waist
! Socially Acceptable
! Do I look silly doing this?

73. Twiddler Input
▪ Chording or multi-tap input
▪ Possible to achieve 40 - 60 wpm after 30+ hours
▪ Chording input about 50% faster than multi-tap
▪ cf 20 wpm on T9, or 60+ wpm for QWERTY
Lyons, K., Starner, T., Plaisted, D., Fusia, J., Lyons, A., Drew, A., & Looney, E. W. (2004, April).
Twiddler typing: One-handed chording text entry for mobile phones. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI
conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 671-678). ACM.

74. Virtual Keyboards
▪ In air text input
▪ Virtual QWERTY keyboard up to 20 wpm
▪ Word Gesture up to 28 wpm
▪ Handwriting around 20-30 wpm
A. Markussen, et. al. Vulture: A Mid-Air Word-Gesture Keyboard (CHI 2014)

75. Unobtrusive Input Devices
▪ GestureWrist
▪ Capacitive sensing
▪ Change signal depending on hand shape
Rekimoto, J. (2001). Gesturewrist and gesturepad: Unobtrusive wearable interaction devices. In
Wearable Computers, 2001. Proceedings. Fifth International Symposium on (pp. 21-27). IEEE.

76. GesturePad

77. Skinput
Using EMG to detect muscle activity
Tan, D., Morris, D., & Saponas, T. S. (2010). Interfaces on the go. XRDS:
Crossroads, The ACM Magazine for Students, 16(4), 30-34.

78. Types of Head Mounted Displays
Occluded
See-thru
Multiplexed

79. See-through Thin Displays
Opinvent Ora
Lumus
▪ Waveguide techniques for thin see-through displays
▪ Wider FOV, AR applications, Social acceptability

80. Where to put Wearables?
▪ Places for unobtrusive wearable technology
Gemperle, F., Kasabach, C., Stivoric, J., Bauer, M., & Martin, R. (1998, October). Design for wearability. In
Wearable Computers, 1998. Digest of Papers. Second International Symposium on (pp. 116-122). IEEE.

81. Where to Place Trackpad?
▪ User study 25 people different postures
▪ Front of thigh most preferred, torso/upper arm worst
Thomas, Bruce, et al. "Determination of placement of a body-attached mouse as a pointing input
device for wearable computers.” ISWC 1999. IEEE Computer Society, 1999.

82. Where do
users want
Wearables?
29% on clothing
28% on wrist
12% on Glasses

83. SOCIAL/CULTURAL

84. TAT Augmented ID

87. How is the User Perceived?

88. The Glasshole Effect

89. Social Interaction
! For mobiles, location and audience have a
significant impact on the type of gestures
people will be willing to perform.

90. Professional vs. Everyday Use
! Everyday acceptance
! Only 12% US adults said they would use AR glasses
! 20% handheld AR users experienced social issues
! 40% neutral/uncomfortable with public gestures
! Professional Use
! 85% Doctors said they would use AR glass in job
! < 25% neutral/uncomfortable with work gestures

91. COGNITIVE

92. Cognitive Load and Interfaces

93. A Typical Work Day
Which is the most cognitively demanding?

94. Cognitive Interference
▪ Structural interference
▪ Two or more tasks compete for limited
resources of a peripheral system
- eg two cognitive processes needing vision
▪ Capacity interference
▪ Total available central processing overwhelmed
by multiple concurrent tasks
- eg trying to add and count at same time

95. Resource Competition Framework
▪ Mobility tasks compete for cognitive resources
with other tasks
▪ the most important given higher priority
▪ RCF is a method for analyzing this, based on:
▪ task analysis
▪ modelling cognitive resources
▪ a resource approach to attention
Oulasvirta, A., Tamminen, S., Roto, V., & Kuorelahti, J. (2005, April). Interaction in 4-second bursts: the
fragmented nature of attentional resources in mobile HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on
Human factors in computing systems (pp. 919-928). ACM.

96. Cognitive Resources & Limitations

98. Application of RCF
Busy street > Escalator > Café > Laboratory.
But if you made Wayfinding, Path Planning, Estimating
Time to Target, Collision Avoidance easier?

99. Handling Interruptions
Show Message Start Reply
Look
Up
Receiving SMS on Glass
“Bing”
Tap
Swipe
Glass
User
▪ Gradually increase engagement
▪ Reduce attention load
Say
Reply

100. Nomadic Radio (2000)
▪ Spatial audio wearable interface
Sawhney, N., & Schmandt, C. (2000). Nomadic radio: speech and audio interaction for contextual
messaging in nomadic environments. ACM transactions on Computer-Human interaction (TOCHI),
7(3), 353-383.

101. Spatial Audio Metaphor
Messages arranged depending on time of day

102. Notification Interruptions
▪ Dynamic scaling of incoming message based
on interruptibility of the user
▪ Busy = silence
▪ Availble = preview

103. Use Cases

104. Ideal Applications
! Use cases that require:
! Hands-free interaction
! Mobile information access
! Constant access to information
! Supporting activity in real world
! Low likelihood of social issues
! Enhanced view of reality

105. Wearable Use Cases

106. Smart Watch Consumer Insights/Primary Uses
Personal assistance Health & Fitness Personal safety
Communication Smart home access Near Field
Communication
(NFC)

108. Social
ac3on
First-­‐person
journalist
Tim
Pool
broadcasts
an
in2mate
view
of
Istanbul
protests.
'I
want
to
show
you
what
it's
like
to
be
there
as
best
I
can,
even
if
that
ends
with
me
running
full-­‐speed
into
a
cafe
and
rubbing
lemons
all
over
my
face
a<er
being
tear-­‐gassed'

110. CityViewAR
! Using AR to visualize Christchurch city buildings
! 3D models of buildings, 2D images, text, panoramas
! AR View, Map view, List view
! Available on Android market

111. CityViewAR on Glass
! AR overlay of virtual buildings in Christchurch

112. Financial Services Applications
! Which Financial Services task could benefit from
using wearables?
! always on, connected, accessible
! Match task requirements to wearable attributes
! Hands-busy, constant information access, user
monitoring, mobile, etc
! Key question: can this task be done on a mobile
phone instead of wearable?

113. Financial Applications
! Possible types of Financial Services experiences
! Customer Service
! Consumer Banking
! Finance Trading
! Remote Collaboration

114. CUSTOMER SERVICE

115. Customer Service
! Wearables provide
! Constant access to information
! Mobile access – move agent from behind counter
! Improved face to face customer experience
- Customer face recognition
- Eye to eye contact

116. Example: Virgin Atlantic
! Virgin Atlantic trialing Glass for customer check in
! Features
! Agent greets customer curb-side, start check-in process
! Provide customer details, personalized service
! Document verification – camera scanning of boarding pass

117. ! Advantages
! Focus attention on customer
! Moves agent to customer
- Earlier engagement
! Reduces technology barrier
between agent and customer
- Hide behind computer/desk
! Provides personalized service
- Name, flight details, weather, diet,
translation services, etc

118. “The trial was a huge success with positive feedback from both
our staff and customers on the usage of wearable technology”
! Key findings
! Only Google Glass permitted the agent to maintain eye
contact showing they were engaged and interesting in helping.
! Some passengers were taken aback initially by Glass wearing
concierges, but, on the whole, passengers responded well.
! Technical challenges to overcome
- Short battery life, camera resolution, wifi issues

119. CONSUMER BANKING

120. Consumer Banking
! Use Glass to provide mobile finance services
! Bank locator
! In-store payments
! Currency conversion
! Receipt capture (using camera)
! Account balance checking
! Etc
! Some banks porting their mobile apps to Glass

121. Example: Westpac
! Ported mobile finance app Cash Tank to Glass
! Features
! Check balance
! Transfer funds
! Find nearest ATM/bank branch
! Get alerts and notifications
! Trialed in NZ and Australia

122. Demo Video
! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qX25cE7Bww

123. Other Examples
! CaixaBank
! Well Fargo
! Discover
! Saudi Investment Bank ATM finder
! FISERV Mobile payments on Glass
! TMG See2Pay small-dollar payments on Glass
! http://blog.dwolla.com/dwolla-now-available-on-google-glass/

124. See2pay Demo
! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-3UKp0a4nU

125. CiaxaBank Glass Application
Branch finder (AR), currency converter, contact details

126. FINANCE TRADING

127. Finance Trading
! Currently most finance trading is confined to
fixed desks/location
! Wearables could allow managers to maintain
awareness while away from trading floor
! Provides constant access to markets
! Alerts where ever they are
! Constant monitoring of individual funds
! Etc.

128. Deskbound to Mobile

129. COLLABORATION

130. Google Glass
▪ Wearable computer – Ego-Vision view
▪ camera + processing + display + connectivity

131. Example – Vipaar Telemedicine
! Vipaar + UAB - http://www.vipaar.com
! Endoscopic view streamed remotely
! Remote expert adds hands – viewed in Glass

132. VIPAAR Demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTOoBwfqBe0

133. GoToAssist
! http://www.gotoassist.com/
! Remote collaboration platform
! Screen sharing
! File transfer
! Chat, Annotation
! SeeIt platform supports Glass

134. SeeIt Glass Demo
! http://www.citrix.com/tv/#videos/10065

135. Research Problems

136. Challenges for the Future (2001)
▪ Privacy
▪ Power use
▪ Networking
▪ Collaboration
▪ Heat dissipation
▪ Interface design
▪ Intellectual tools
▪ Augmented Reality systems
Starner, T. (2001). The challenges of wearable computing: Part 1. IEEE Micro,21(4), 44-52.
Starner, T. (2001). The challenges of wearable computing: Part 2. IEEE Micro,21(4), 54-67.

137. Gesture Interaction With Glass
▪ 3 Gear Systems
▪ Hand tracking
▪ Hand data sent to glass
▪ Wifi networking
▪ Hand joint position
▪ AR application rendering
▪ Vuforia tracking

138. Performance
▪ Full 3d hand model input
▪ 10 - 15 fps tracking, 1 cm fingertip resolution

139. ● Meta Gesture Interaction
▪ Depth sensor + Stereo see-through
▪ https://www.spaceglasses.com/

140. Current Collaboration
▪ First person remote conferencing/hangouts
▪ Limitations
- Single POV, no spatial cues, no annotations, etc

141. Sharing Space: Social Panoramas
▪ Capture and share social spaces in real time
▪ Enable remote people to feel like they’re with you

142. Context Sensing
▪ Using context to manage information
▪ progressive information display as user shows
interest
▪ Context from
▪ Speech
▪ Gaze
▪ Real world
▪ Wearable AR Display
Ajanki, A., Billinghurst, M., Gamper, H., Järvenpää, T., Kandemir, M., Kaski, S., ... & Tossavainen, T.
(2011). An augmented reality interface to contextual information. Virtual reality, 15(2-3), 161-173.

145. Gaze Interaction

146. AR View

147. More Information Over Time

148. Conclusions

149. Conclusions
! Wearable computing represents a fourth
generation of computing devices
! Google Glass is the first consumer wearable
! Lightweight, usable, etc
! A range of wearables will appear in 2014
! Ecosystem of devices
! Significant research opportunities exist
! User interaction, displays, social impact

150. More Information
• Mark Billinghurst
– mark.billinghurst@hitlabnz.org
– @marknb00
• Website
– www.hitlabnz.org