Using wearable technology to gain insight into children's physical and social behaviors

Due to social and financial demands, at least 61% of households have both parents working. Parents and children spend 8 to 10 hours away from each other on a daily basis. During this time, there is very limited communication between parents and the children. Parents have little visibility into what happens during the day with their children and have to heavily rely on the basic notes provided by the teachers. Alternatively, their children have to communicate to them the happenings of their day. Young children and children with special needs have a much harder time communicating the details of their day to their parents. Wearable technology is going through a revolution with 1 in 5 Americans owning a wearable device. There are already many devices on the market which measure biological functions. As a result, we are presented with an opportunity to close the communication gap using technology to gather data on children while they are away from their parents. This data can be analyzed to gain better insight into children's social and physical behaviors. An online survey was conducted for this thesis to understand the potential market. Research was done to understand what physiological factors would be of interest to parents as well as other factors. Results concluded that parents were in fact interested in receiving data about their children. They were most interested in knowing their child's location and when their child was experiencing a stressful situation. Based on the results of the survey, a device is proposed to help address this problem. An approach for a phased rollout is provided as well as an experiment to gather data.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering and Management Program

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Ramesh, Sagini

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Patrick Hale.

• Engineering and Management Program.
• System Design and Management Program.
• Engineering Systems Division.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106258

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/106258