New Product Development of Wearable Technologies: A Framework of Wearable Epiphanies

This paper tackles the issue of wearable technologies’ marketability, analyzing alternative paths of new product development (NPD). Currently, wearable technologies NPD mainly remains within the borders of computer science which develops oddly looking wearable computers and radical fashion design which emphasizes the beautification of technologies as experiments to interaction design. Users are generally considered as passive adopters of technologies with little engagement at design and post-design stages. In contrast, a proposed framework of wearable epiphanies places users on the intersection of technology push innovations and radical fashion stressing current HCI implications, while investigating future possibilities.