Can IoT Wearable Devices Feed Frugal Innovation?

Abstract

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about Frugal services, that is, services that use existing technologies for a purpose other than the one for which they were designed. In this paper, we study whether the IoT wearable environment can be a fertile ground for the production of Frugal services. Through a real-world study, we investigate whether these devices are widespread, if there are obstacles that limit their diffusion, if the sensors they are equipped with are deemed reliable and, finally, if people who own them have an altruistic propensity or not. The results, from the frugal point of view, are encouraging: the IoT wearable environment seems to be pervasive enough and ubiquitous, without great obstacles for their adoption. The provided sensors seem to be generally reliable, whereas the altruistic propensity might be questioned: in general, people are not inclined to share, but if the goal is clear (in our case we hypothesized a fight against Covid-19), altruistic propensity grows a lot.