Designed For Me: Customisable Wearables to the Aid

Abstract:
Wearable sensors, especially sensing technologies are of critical importance in a wide variety of applications including disability management, age care, physical rehabilitation, and sports. Despite the growing need, adherence to these technologies is still low. Research finds that a major factor of technology abandonment is the poor fit between the user's abilities and the system's characteristics. This is not a surprise considering the challenges faced by people in these applications areas manifest in dramatically different ways in individuals and change over time. This talk explores a new approach to creating wearable technologies by replacing mass production, i.e. "designed for many" with personal fabrication, i.e. "designed for me". Combining novel fabrication technologies such as 3D and 2D functional printing, and user-cantered design (UCD), "designed for me" aims to create highly customisable wearable devices from on-skin interfaces to personalized accessories.


Biodata:
Anusha Withana is an ARD DECRA fellow and a senior lecturer (Asst. Prof.) at the School of Computer Science, the University of Sydney where he leads the AID-LAB. He received his Masters and Ph.D. from Keio University, Japan, and was a postdoc at Max Planck Institute for Informatics and Saarland University before joining the University of Sydney. He works in the research field of human-computer interaction (HCI), mainly focusing on creating personalized enabling technologies, where technology blend and harmonizes with users and the environment leveraging on natural affordances of the context. His research work has been published in top-tier HCI conferences and journals such as ACM SIGCHI/UIST. He has won numerous awards including the Most Innovative Engineers in Australia award 2020, Most Promising Technology Award at Innovfest unBound 2016, and his research have featured in leading media outlets such as CNN, Discovery TV, SBS, Straits Times, Gizmodo, and Engadget.