A Survey of Wearable Tracker Version Updates
Khalid Ahmad Khattak, Sandra I. Woolley · Electronic workshops in computing · 2023
As part of a requirements elicitation process for the design of improved interfaces to system-level data, this short paper compares and contrasts wearable tracker 'changelog' documents that communicate software and embedded firmware updates. Seventeen models of five device families of heart rate sensing wearable trackers (from four manufacturers) conformed to specified selection criteria. The changelogs for these devices over a two-year period were analysed for content, style and consistency. Although the emphasis of all changelogs was on reporting improvements and fixes, markedly different styles were observed between manufacturers. The number of update items per version entry for the seventeen tracker changelogs varied from 1 to 6.5 and the number of words per item varied across manufacturer changelogs from 4.6 (Withings) to 18.9 (Fitbit). Changelog entries for Garmin and Withings devices employed a bullet point presentation style whereas Fitbit and Polar changelogs employed a combination of prose and bullet points. In contrast to the concise bullet points of Withings changelogs, Fitbit changelogs had a more conversational style and addressed the user in 2 nd person (you/your). Ideally, the presentation, detail and relevance of changelog content would be tailored according to the needs and preferences of stakeholders such as user wearers, researchers or health professionals.