Understanding Requirements for Textile Input Devices: Individually-tailored Interfaces Within Home Environments

In the last few years, an increasing public awareness regarding the consequences of the demographic change can be observed in many countries, which is imposing considerable challenges on future health care systems in the next decades. As a framework of the research presented here we introduce a currently running interdisciplinary research project, in which novel textile input devices are to be developed, iteratively designed, and evaluated. In order to learn about the individual requirements for using smart textiles in a home con- text, we carried out a exploratory questionnaire study in which 72 participants (20-76 y) evaluated perceived benefits and barriers of smart textiles in the home context. Results show a first insight into user experience the general willingness to adopt smart textile input devices. Also, the perceived suitability of functions to be controlled by those novel input devices as well as the reported appropri- ateness of different rooms and device types in which smart input devices could be integrated were collected. Results show, overall, a high willingness of partic- ipants to use smart textiles as input devices.