Handheld versus wearable interaction design for professionals
Allan Stisen, Henrik Blunck, Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard, Kaj Grønbæk · 2014
With the blooming of new available wrist-worn devices there are potentials for these to support the work done in many professional domains. One such domain is hospital service work. This paper explores two wearable prototypes' challenges and opportunities to support future hospital service work. This explorative study was conducted with 4 experienced hospital orderlies who interacted with an application across two wearable concepts, and one handheld smartphone in five scenarios, not involving patients, in a hospital environment. The interactions were recorded with a chest-mounted camera afterwards semi-structured interviews with each participant were conducted. This study shows that wearable computers can effectively support the maintenance work of the orderlies and has domain-specific advantages over the handheld smartphone, e.g., the former support glancing at the task information. Furthermore, we outline aspects to aid designers of next generation wearable designs for hospital service work.