Empower everybody - designing persuasive wearable technology for user empowerment

The rising rate of obesity world-wide is a significant problem for society and affected individuals. There is a large body of past and ongoing work into the use of technology to promote increased physical activity in an attempt to reverse this trend. We discuss our ongoing efforts to develop and evaluate low-complexity wearable ambient displays for personal and social activity monitoring. We consider the crucial, and often conflicting, design imperatives of ensuring that persuasive wearables are noticed by the user, providing some level of privacy, and respecting the user’s body and their personal and social image.