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Smart Wearables and Health

Contact Person: Aylin Ilhan

Smart wearables, for example activity trackers provided by brands as Fitbit or Garmin and Smart Watches such as the Apple Watch, enable users to measure their heart rate, sleeping quality, count of steps and to track their exercise. Functionality differs from device to device but to summarise,  this kind of technology allows a broad range of users to easily self-quantify in new and more ways than ever before.

This new research area in the field of Information Science creates opportunities to conduct research on health-related information services. Not only the ease of use, usefulness, and trust (data security) are important research aspects, but the utilization by health insurance funds is important as well. The use of activity trackers in combination with Social Media is another interesting aspect.

Publications

Fietkiewicz, K. J., & Ilhan, A. (2020). Fitness Tracking Technologies: Data Privacy Doesn’t Matter? The (Un)Concerns of Users, Former Users and Non-Users. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (in press).

Ilhan, A., & Fietkiewicz, K. J. (2019). Learning for a healthier lifestyle through gamification: A case study of fitness tracker applications. In I. Buchem, R. Klamma, & F. Wild, Perspectives on Wearable Enhanced Learning. Current Trends, Research and Practice. (pp. X). New York: Springer (in press).

Schaffarczyk L., & Ilhan A. (2019) Healthier Life and More Fun? Users’ Motivations to Apply Activity Tracking Technology and the Impact of Gamification. In: Meiselwitz G. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media. Communication and Social Communities (pp. 124-136). HCII 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11579. Springer, Cham. Doi: doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21905-5_10

Ilhan, A. (2018). Motivations to Join Fitness Communities on Facebook: Which Gratifications are Sought and Obtained? In G. Meiselwitz (Ed.), Social Computing and Social Media. Technologies and Analytics (pp. 50–67). Cham, Switzerland: Springer (Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series; 10914).

Henkel, M., Heck, T., & Göretz, J. (2018). Rewarding Fitness Tracking – the Communication and Promotion of Health Insurer's Bonus Programs and the Use of Self-Tracking Data. In G. Meiselwitz (Ed.), Social Computing and Social Media. Technologies and Analytics (pp. 28–49). Cham, Switzerland: Springer (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 10914).

Fietkiewicz, K. J., & Henkel, M. (2018). Privacy Protecting Fitness Trackers: An Oxymoron or Soon to be Reality? In G. Meiselwitz (Ed.), Social Computing and Social Media. User Experience and Behavior (pp. 431–444). Cham, Switzerland: Springer (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 10913).

Ilhan, A., & Henkel, M. (2018). 10,000 Steps a Day for Health? User-based Evaluation of Wearable Activity Trackers. In Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 3 – 6, 2018, Waikoloa Village (pp. 3376–3385). Honolulu, HI: HICSS (ScholarSpace).

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