Understanding requirements for textile input devices individually tailored interfaces within home environments

Abstract

In the last few years, many countries showed an increased public awareness regarding the consequences of the demographic change, which presents considerable challenges on future health care systems in the next decades. As a framework of the research presented here, we introduce a currently running interdisciplinary research project in which novel textile input devices are to be developed, iteratively designed, and evaluated. In order to learn about the individual requirements for using smart textiles in a home context, we carried out a exploratory questionnaire study in which 72 participants (aged 20-76) evaluated perceived benefits and barriers of smart textiles in the home context. Results show a first insight into user experience and the general willingness to adopt smart textile input devices. Also, the perceived suitability of functions to be controlled by those novel input devices as well as the reported appropriateness of different rooms and general device styles into which smart input devices could be integrated were collected. Results show, overall, a high willingness of participants to use smart textiles as input devices. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.