促進健康應用發展之具彈性及可擴充性穿戴裝置原型製作平台

Abstract

近年來穿戴式裝置的市場有很顯著的發展與成長，特別是在健康應用的領域上。然而要能設計出有用的穿戴式裝置不是一件容易的事，通常需要經過許多輪的設計流程。此外健康方面的應用為了處理相關的問題，在軟硬體的設計上有很多樣化的需求。因此在穿戴式裝置的原型製作上需要許多的專業技能來製作能夠用於測試與驗證的裝置，但這個過程通常會花費大量的時間與金錢。我們首先與醫療護理的專業人士進行焦點式(focus group)及參與式設計(participatory design)的研討會來討論如何設計一個符合需求的原型製作平台。在這份論文裡，我們提出了BioScope這個具彈性及可擴充性的原型製作平台，此平台是基於模組化的概念來設計。BioScope的裝置透過一個繃帶的形式來讓使用者很容易的穿戴在身上不同的位置。我們提供在相關應用上常用的感測與硬體模組，讓沒有相關工程技術的設計人員能夠透過像推疊樂高積木般來快速地製作出他們需要的原型裝置。針對進階的開發人員，BioScope亦提供軟體設計介面與工具來擴充可與平台相容的感測模組。接著透過使用BioScope製作健康相關應用的裝置來作平台的驗證，並在結論中討論此平台的限制與未來可能進一步發展的方向。

Recent developments in smart wearable devices have created a new and exciting market, particularly in the health/wellness domains. However, designing usable and useful wearable devices is not easy and it often requires multiple design iterations. In addition, health/wellness applications that address different health/wellness problems may have diverse hardware/software needs. Thus, prototyping requires significant engineering skills to create a wearable device for testing and validation, but multiple iterations of prototyping often consume large amounts of time and money. In this study, we conducted focus group and participatory design workshops with medical professionals and engineers to identify the requirements for designing a suitable prototyping platform. This thesis proposes a flexible and extensible wearable prototyping platform called BioScope, which is based on a modular hardware/software design. BioScope has a form in the shape of a smart bandage for simply affixing wearable device to different body locations. BioScope provides flexibility to designers with limited engineering skills in order to rapidly create prototypes by stacking LEGO-like blocks comprising some frequently used physiological sensory/hardware modules. For advanced developers with experienced engineering skills, BioScope provides tools and APIs to facilitate extensions with new sensory modules that are compatible with the BioScope platform. We validated the BioScope platform by building health/wellness devices. We also discuss the platform’s limitations and future work.