Design and implementation of a usability-framework for smartwatches

Abstract

Due to technological developments in the last decade, the class of wearable computers arose which offers innovative access to human-computer interaction. Especially smartwatches attracted attention and are established as a permanently worn computer device on many wrists nowadays. In particular, for new technologies usability is an important success factor. Although usability is a well-known domain with a long research history, unique characteristics of smartwatch applications complicate the utilization of recent usability analysis methods. Therefore, we survey recent techniques for the usability analysis, outline and respectively adapt suited approaches based on the requirements induced by the special characteristics of smartwatches. In addition, we design and implement a usability framework that facilitates the automated usability analysis for smartwatch applications in a design science research approach. Furthermore, we demonstrate the applicability of the developed framework and show the results of a usability analysis for an exemplary case study.