Socioeconomic Class in Physical Activity Wearables Research and Design

Wearable technology for physical activity promotion is a frequent research topic within HCI and health, and researchers have documented that much of our knowledge is sourced from understanding the needs of populations from college educated, racially privileged, Western backgrounds. However socioeconomic class, a core component for how people perceive physical activity, wearables, and even wearable studies, has not often been contended with. In this critical discussion of the literature, incorporating examples from over 30 deployment studies involving wearables and over 70 other related works, we investigate how socioeconomic class shows up in study design and identify how class cultures are embedded in the design of wearable technology. We hypothesize that common study components related to time and activity type engenders high SES class cultures and ultimately risk creating intervention generated inequalities. We discuss the implications of ignoring class such as further perpetuating inequities in subsequent waves of wearable device maturity.

• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI.