Sociable Wearable Design 

Clint Heyer

PhD Confirmation Talk
Monday June 20th at 11am
General Purpose South Building
Room 78-420
University of Queensland 
St. Lucia Campus. 


Abstract
The field of wearable computing is now surpassing early technical
limitations of hardware and software, maturing to the stage where cohesive
systems can be built. One of the areas for exploration in wearables is
social computing applications. Many early research explorations of social
computing applications have been founded on a technology-driven approach
- where the primary goal is making the technology work. Similarly many
wearable projects have been done within the confines of a laboratory, or of
use scenarios, such as computer maintenance. However, researchers are
beginning to bring social and design considerations to the foreground in
search of better methods for designing social computing applications.  Even
though wearables by definition are embedded in the social world, very little
work has done in understanding what this means from a social perspective.
For example, this inattention has led to wearable designs that users do not
like to use in public because of the negative opinions received. Questions
that need to be addressed include: how do wearables impact the social
environment? How can wearables be a positive influence, rather than
negative? How can we design so that observers can understand wearables? What
opportunities are there for wearables to assist social interactions? I
propose to look at social wearable applications using a more holistic
approach, drawing from user-centred design, ethnomethodology and symbolic
interactionism schools of thought. Using this approach I will develop a
series of prototypes that are grounded in qualitative social research as
well as identify key methods for social wearable design.


Clint Heyer graduated with B.InfEnv Hons. Class I, 2002 from the  School of
Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland,
Australia. He was a research Scientist at the Fraunhofer Society in the
Autonomous Intelligent Systems Institute for 2003. In 2004  he commenced a
PhD in computer science, also at ITEE, University of Queensland.

His work is funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award and a scholarship
from ACID, the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design


Supervisors: Margot Brereton and Stephen Viller