Toward wearable social networking with iBand

Abstract

The iBand is a wearable bracelet-like device that exchanges information about its users and their relationships. This exchange happens during the common gesture of the handshake, which is detected by the device. As such, iBand seeks to explore potential applications at the intersection of social networking and ubiquitous computing. In this paper, we discuss the iBand technology and feedback from an initial study in which 11 devices were used at two different social networking events. The results suggest that control over personal information is an ongoing issue, but they also highlight the possibility for wearable devices to enable the creation of a set of invented techno-gestures with different affordances and constraints that might be more appropriate for certain social interaction applications.