Development of Smart Garments and Accessories to Support Behaviour Change in Teen-agers: Considerations on the Use of Interactive Virtual Prototyping

摘要

This paper provides some considerations and preliminary results on research work for the development and experimentation of a behaviour change system to promote healthy lifestyle in teen-agers and prevent the development of lifestyle related disease. Lifestyle-related illnesses are among the top healthcare challenges in Europe. As an example, the rapidly increasing prevalence of overweight and obesity among children and adolescents reflects a global 'epidemic' worldwide. Due to the associated serious medical conditions, it is estimated that obesity already accounts for up to 7% of healthcare costs in the European Union (EU), as well as costs to the wider economy associated with lower productivity, lost output and premature death. Obesity in younger age groups has been recognized as an alarming key predictor for obesity in adulthood, but also entails a number of short-term health complications in juvenile age along with greater risk of social and psychological problems. The rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and in particular mobile technologies, together with their increasing diffusion among the EU populations, offers an important opportunity for facing these issues in an innovative manner introducing the possibility of a new technological framework to re-design the healthcare system model. Starting from and leveraging the work being performed in the course of the EU-funded project "PEGASO", the research focuses on developing solutions for self-managing life-style with specific target on the younger population. More specifically, an important part of the solution is a wearable sensor system for lifestyle monitoring and awareness development, composed of smart garments and bracelets. Due to the core relevance of the system for the overall solution, it is important that their design meets a set of requirements linked to the performance of the system, but also in terms of user requirements. Tapping into the potential of Interactive Virtual Prototyping (IVP) offers the possibility of designing and testing solutions that offer higher user acceptance and market opportunities. This paper briefly examines this potential approach, looking in particular at the fashion sector and how IVP is used, highlighting the additional issues posed by smart garments and accessories.