DiaFit: Designing Customizable Wearables for Type 1 Diabetes Monitoring
Erman Akyol, Roberta Cabral Cabral Ramos Mota, Sowmya Somanath
Abstract
Research has highlighted the need for customization of health-related technologies. However, few studies have examined its impact on wearable healthcare devices. We present a co-design study where we learned about people’s preferences and ideas for customized glucose monitors. We worked with people who have Type 1 Diabetes and learned about their challenges with current glucose monitors and ways to address them in physical product design. To understand people’s perception towards using customizable glucose monitors, we prototyped one simple example toolkit, DiaFit, consisting of multiple modular accessories for assembling glucose monitors. We invited participants to try DiaFit and learned about their acceptability of customizable glucose monitors. We conclude with preliminary lessons learned about customization as an approach to addressing individual differences in the context of health technologies.