martwatch Adoption - A User Study of Expectations and Privacy Concerns

LOCATION: Auditorium 2, TEL, Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, 20^th floor

Date/Time: 13.06.2016, 14:15-15:00

SPEAKER: Felix Kaiser (TU Berlin) 

ABSTRACT:

Smartwatches promise the user more efficiency and comfort, which is mainly given through their sensors, providing unobtrusive information and making use of it as a remote. Critics contrary, that the smartwatch lacks in size, design, the number of features and battery life and therefor will not be able to achieve mass adoption. To identify how potential users, think about the smartwatch, two focus group discussions were conducted, with one group of smartwatch users and one group of people who do not have such a device. Topics were related to experiences, expectations and possible privacy concerns, because smartwatch sensors produce highly sensitive data and due to the extreme rise of information flow, it is a big challenge in current research to protect such. Participants do not receive new privacy risks through the watch and expectations are high (e.g. calling people, taking pictures). In general, the participants are highly interested in wearables and it seems that trying and experiencing the possibilities leads to a rise of interest.