Clint Zeagler

Georgia Institute of Technology | GT · Institute for People and Technology

Wearable technology has the potential to usher in a new wave of assistive technology. Many wearable devices are already being used by people with disabilities as assistive technology. Here we discuss how designers might use design considerations and body maps to make sure that the wearable devices they are creating are accessible to everyone. The h...

Fast-paced environments require operators who perform in them to use their cognitive abilities such as perception and memory to complete tasks. Individual differences in ability can result in different outcomes. Previous research has shown that common errors in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) can be reduced if individual differences in cognition, such...

For the past 15 years wearable technology, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), and the Internet of Things (IoT) have been gaining in popularity adoption in our everyday lives and in industrial design courses. In years past, there was an excitement around the seemingly limitless potential of these advances in technology to change lives and to usher huma...

On-body input interfaces that can be used accurately without visual attention could have a wide range of applications where vision is needed for a primary task: emergency responders, pilots, astronauts, and people with vision impairments could benefit by making interfaces accessible. This paper describes a between-participant study (104 participant...

Working or WERKing on a wearable technology project in a transdisciplinary group can be an effective way of learning new skills and collaboration techniques. This paper describes a case study of running a wearable technology group project within an undergraduate course entitled Wearable Technology and Society. The computational media students in th...

Animal-computer interaction is a quickly growing field in computer science however unlike HCI, there are no tools to ease interface development for its users, increasing overhead. Here, we present the beginning of a toolkit created specifically for animal interactions. We implement a gesture-based interface, a slider, as it is highly configurable i...

Medical alert dogs can save lives by alerting their human partners of impending seizures, diabetic crises, the presence of allergens, and other medical emergencies. Recent research has shown that dogs can also alert emergency services or family members through body-worn sensors. In the home, however, service dogs do not typically wear their service...

Working dogs can perform many tasks that improve the lives of humans. An explosion of new technologies in Animal-Computer Interaction enable dogs to assist in a variety of scenarios. Dogs can summon emergency services, report finding a lost child, determine what explosive they just detected, alert to a tornado siren, and much more. Giving working d...

With the advent of commercially available heads-up-displays and other mobile information systems, there arises a need for on-body interfaces that can be used accurately and quickly without visual attention. In this dissertation, I examine methods for creating textile-based interfaces supporting effective on-body interaction and robust manufacturing...

One of the first questions a researcher or designer of wearable technology has to answer in the design process is where on the body the device should be worn. It has been almost 20 years since Gemperle et al. wrote "Design for Wearability" [17], and although much of her initial guidelines on humans factors surrounding wearability still stand, devic...

LE MONSTRE is a responsive performance garment, changing the sound and projection of the performance space through audience interaction. As the audience is invited to investigate the garment through touch and pull, capacitive and resistive strain sensors relay the interaction as wifi MIDI signals. The garment was designed as an investigation into t...

Working on a wearable technology interdisciplinary project team can be challenging because of a lack of shared understanding between different fields, and a lack of ability in cross-disciplinary communication. We describe an interdisciplinary collaborative design process used for creating a wearable musical instrument with a musician. Our diverse t...

Canines and humans have lived together for many thousands of years, to our mutual benefit. In addition to providing companionship, dogs can perform critical roles, such as assisting humans with medical concerns, searching for lost individuals, and detecting substances by scent. Researching how technology might be designed for canines has the potent...

Touchscreens can provide a way for service dogs to relay emergency information about their handlers from a home or office environment. In this paper, we build on work exploring the ability of canines to interact with touchscreen interfaces. We observe new requirements for training and explain best practices found in training techniques. Learning fr...

Search and Rescue (SAR) is a critical component of disaster recovery efforts. Every second saved in the search increases the chances of finding survivors and the majority of these teams prefer using canines [5]. Our goal is to help enable SAR dog and handler teams to work together more effectively. Using a semi-structured interviews and guidance fr...

The rapidly expanding market for wearable computing devices (wearables), driven by advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), wireless access, and public acceptance of a design aesthetic, is indicative of the near limitless potential for changing the relationship of users to information context(s). As the adoption of wearable dev...

This paper describes a wearable device prototype that utilizes an accelerometer to track hand motion in order to capture an archer's "release" and uses this information to help archers in training sessions where the coach is not present. Release is a critical component of an archer's form and is categorized into either good, bad, or pluck release....

Wearable technology projects afford the opportunity to work within interdisciplinary teams to create truly innovative solutions. Sometimes it is difficult for teams of designers and engineers to work together because of process differences and communication issues. Here we present a case study that describes how one team developed a system to overc...

Wearable technology projects sometimes present complex problems, which are hard to solve through computer science solutions alone. Our interdisciplinary team met such a problem in the form of near infrared sensor noise due to fabric interference. We met the challenge through software/hardware solutions, but also strategic fabric selection and soft-...

Wearable computers and head-mounted displays are in the press daily. Why now? While the basic technology has existed for decades, only recently have these devices become practical and desirable. Meeting the Challenge: The Path Towards a Consumer Wearable Computer, demonstrates four challenges along the road to making a consumer wearable computer: p...

The rapidly expanding market for wearable devices, driven by the confluence of information and communication technology and public acceptance of a design aesthetic, suggests near limitless potential for consumer uses. As adoption of wearables spreads, there are cultural and social impacts that represent both barriers and opportunities, with subsequ...

Working dogs have improved the lives of thousands of people throughout history. However, communication between human and canine partners is currently limited. The main goal of the FIDO project is to research fundamental aspects of wearable technologies to support communication between working dogs and their handlers. In this study, the FIDO team in...

Computer-mediated interaction for working dogs is an important new domain for interaction research. In domestic settings, touchscreens could provide a way for dogs to communicate critical information to humans. In this paper we explore how a dog might interact with a touchscreen interface. We observe dogs' touchscreen interactions and record diffic...

We designed an experiment with the goal of assessing wear-able reachability for canines. We investigated the effect of placement on the ability of dogs to reach on-body interfaces with their snouts. In our pilot study, seven placements along the front legs, rib cage, hip and chest are tested with six dogs. The results showed that the front leg plac...

The "wearability" of wearable technology addresses the factors that affect the degree of comfort the wearer experiences while wearing a device, including physical, psychological, and social aspects. While the physical and psychological aspects of wearing technology have been investigated since early in the development of the field of wearable compu...

This chapter addresses the influence of a wearable system on the wearer's emotional and social comfort: the "social wearability" of the system. Social wearability influences system performance and user decisions to adopt or reject a wearable system in much the same way as other aspects of wearability like physical comfort or usability. In this chap...

Knee replacement surgery is dramatically increasing in the United States for people over the age of 45 and rehabilitation after surgery is a necessary step for the success of the replacement. Rehabilitation requires regular access to a wide variety of resources and personnel. Currently, there are no self-care tools to enable tracking a patient's re...

Wearable technology, specifically e-textiles, offers the potential for interacting with electronic devices in a whole new manner. However, some may find the operation of a system that employs non-traditional on-body interactions uncomfortable to perform in a public setting, impacting how readily a new form of mobile technology may be received. Thus...

We explore the wash-ability of conductive materials used in creating traces and touch sensors in wearable electronic textiles. We perform a wash test measuring change in resistivity after each of 10 cycles of washing for conductive traces constructed using two types of conductive thread, conductive ink, and combinations of thread and ink.

Working dogs have improved the lives of thousands of people. However, communication between human and canine partners is currently limited. The main goal of the FIDO project is to research fundamental aspects of wearable technologies to support communication between working dogs and their handlers. In this pilot study, the FIDO team investigated on...

We present our findings from the Electronic Textile Interface Swatch Book Workshops. The workshops were designed as the first in a series of collaborative design experiences that introduce small groups of faculty/students teams from particular design disciplines to the concept of electronic textile interfaces (ETIs) through the use of a textile int...

Electronic textiles (or e-textiles) attempt to integrate electronics and computing into fabric. In our efforts to create new e-textile interfaces and construction techniques for our Electronic Textile Interface Swatch Book (an e-textile toolkit), we have created a multi-use jog wheel using multilayer embroidery, sound sequins from PVDF film and a t...

The Textile Interface Swatchbook demonstrates how conductive embroidery can render graphical user interface-like (GUI) widgets on fabric. Such widgets might be used to control mobile electronics such as a music player, mobile phone, or projected display. At present, six swatches have been created for the swatchbook: pleat, menu, rocker, multi-touch...

In a mobile environment, the visual attention a person can devote to a computer is often limited. In such situations, a manual interface should be ldquogropable,rdquo that is, the user should be able to access and use the interface with little to no visual attention. We compare stationary and mobile input on two embroidered textile interfaces; a si...

In a mobile environment, the visual attention a person can devote to a computer is often limited. In such situations, a manual interface should be “gropable,” that is, the user should be able to access and use the interface with little to no visual attention. We compare stationary and mobile input on two embroidered textile interfaces; a single tou...

Presented on January 14, 2009 from 6:00 – 7:00 pm in the Architecture Auditorium/East Architecture Building. Georgia Tech professors Thad Starner and Clint Zeagler discussed the natural aspect of mobile interfaces and the special challenges of designing technology for human mobility and interaction. Thad and Clint presented examples of designing bo...