Putting humans first: evaluating the usability of wearable robotics

The applications of wearable robotics to assist, support or augment human capabilities have immense potential. Currently, their acceptance and adoption are limited by hurdles such as a lack of guidelines and evaluation standards to achieve widespread daily life usability. A stronger focus on user-centered design (UCD) is expected to tackle usability limitations. The careful consideration and integration of user needs are essential to successfully develop an effective, efficient, and satisfactory human-robot interaction. However, dedicated usability studies are scarce, limiting the availability of benchmarks and the generalisability of results.

In a comprehensive analysis of online survey responses from 158 developers of wearable robotics, current design and evaluation practices were compared to what is reported in the literature in an attempt to derive recommendations for usability evaluation and reporting. An overview of the most prevalent wearable robotic device contexts of use and their technology maturity was derived, and their influences on evaluation practices were analysed. The research was led by Jan Thomas Meyer from the Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory at ETH Zurich, and FHT researchers Prof. Roger Gassert and Dr Olivier Lambercy from the Connected Rehabilitation Technology and Assistive Devices module.

The article external page'An analysis of usability evaluation practices and contexts of use in wearable robotics'call_made detailing these insights is published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.

In conclusion, the research team defined a set of evaluation recommendations that may help other developers to ensure that the target user needs are considered and met throughout the development of wearable robotic devices. This analysis might support developers to create protocols to evaluate usability requirements and understand the context where user-centered design to help users.