The comfort assessment of wearable computers

This paper presents a tool to measure the comfort of wearable computers. The comfort rating scales (CRS) measure wearable comfort across 6 dimensions. These dimensions are Emotion, Attachment, Harm, Perceived change, Movement and Anxiety. This paper also presents two studies in which the CRS have been used to assess the comfort of two types of wearable technology currently being developed at the University of Birmingham, these are the SensVest and the χ³. The results of the studies show that the CRS can be used to aid designers and manufacturers focus on what modifications are needed to wearable computer design to make them more comfortable. They also show that assessments of wearable computer comfort must be made in situations and environments to which the computer will ultimately be introduced.