Perception of Wearable Computers for Everyday Life by the General Public: Impact of Culture and Gender on Technology

This paper examines the perception of wearable computers for everyday life by the general public, in order to foster the adoption of this technology. We present a social study that focuses on sensors, actuators, autonomy, uses, and privacy. Carried out in 2005, it considers gender and cultural disparities in two dissimilar groups: French (115 males, 59 females) and Japanese (61 males, 54 females) citizens. Acknowledging that exposition to wearables can alter perception about them, we designed a garment-shaped prototype to check our results, estimate shifts of perception, and define guidelines for equipment and services. We describe our prototype, and future experiments dealing with face-to-face contacts, community awareness, and relaxing environments.