Wearables and wellness for the young elderly - transforming everyday lives

Mobile and wearable technologies have uniqueadvantages within health and wellness. Current knowledge on wearables shows,however, that users easily abandon them after an initial use period. We wantedto investigate whether adding a social dimension to wearable use would bevaluable in the young elderly age group, and investigate user experiences ofwearables when introducing them to people not in the traditional target groupof fitness wearables and without previous experience of wearables. In this exploratorystudy aimed at gaining a holistic picture to guide further research, we utilizemultiple research methods to gain rich data. We found that the young elderlyhad a clear interest in the wearable. Introducinga social dimension to the wearable seemed beneficial as the young elderlyquickly formed a both supportive and competitive relation. The socialconnection formed through the device appeared to be value adding for theparticipants and seems to at least partially address the previously identifiedbarriers.