JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Wearable technologies have crossed boundaries and have been accepted into clinical use to better assess the physical fitness and quality of life of patients and in the use of preventive healthcare. Usability is pivotal in overcoming constraints and gaining users' acceptance of technology such as wearables and companion mobile health applications. However, due to poor design and evaluation, interactive wearables and healthcare applications have often been restricted from delivering their full potential.

Objective:

The goal of this scoping review is to identify the type of wearables and their frequency of use in studies, along with mobile health applications, and their combinations and the attributes and evaluation methods of usability within the healthcare domain.

Methods:

An extensive search was conducted across four electronic databases, spanning the last 30 years up to December 2021. Studies including the keywords wearables, mobile health applications, medical use cases, physiological data and usability frameworks, attributes, and evaluation methods were considered for inclusion. 5 reviewers screened the collected publications and charted the features based on the research questions. These characteristics were further mapped into categories grounded on existing usability and wearable taxonomies. This scoping review followed the Arksey and O’Malley framework and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews checklist.

Results:

382 reports resulted from the search strategy, and 68 articles were included. The majority of the studies (57/68, 84%) involved the simultaneous use of wearables and mobile applications. Wrist-worn commercially available devices like wristbands and smartwatches were the most prevalent, accounting for 66% (45/68) of the wearables identified in our review. Nearly half of the data from the medical domain (32/68, 47%) focused on studies involving participants with chronic illnesses or disorders. 29 usability attributes were identified, and five attributes were frequently employed for evaluation: satisfaction (34/68, 50%), ease of use (27/68, 40%), user experience (16/68, 24%), perceived usefulness (18/68, 26%), and effectiveness (15/68, 22%). Only seven (10%) studies employed a user- or human-centered design paradigm for usability evaluation.

Conclusions:

Our scoping review identified the type of wearables and their frequency of use in studies, along with the use cases for which the wearables were used in the medical context. Additionally, we examined the evaluation of these wearables in the form of usability methods, attributes, and frameworks. Within the array of available wearables and mobile health applications, healthcare providers and manufacturers encounter the challenge of selecting devices and companion apps that are effective, user-friendly, and compatible with user interactions. The current gap in usability and user experience research limits our understanding of the strengths and limitations of wearable technologies. Furthermore, additional research is necessary to overcome these limitations and improve researchers' understanding of this field.