Perspectives on the adoption and mediation implications of smart glasses: a qualitative focus group study in healthcare (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Latest developments of smart glasses take place in a breathtaking speed, but the acceptance of smart glasses still remains in an early phase. Although smart glasses were perceived to be potential revolutionary for healthcare, there is only limited research on the acceptance and social impact of smart glasses in healthcare. Also the theoretical approaches which are used to study acceptance of new technology are limited applied to smart glasses. OBJECTIVE This study aims to get a better insight in the theoretical foundations and identify themes regarding adoption, mediation and the use of smart glasses from the perspective of healthcare professionals. METHODS a qualitative research design with focus groups was used to collect data. Three focus groups with 26 participants were conducted. Data were analyzed using content analysis. RESULTS Our analysis revealed six overarching themes related to the anticipated adoption of smart glasses: knowledge, innovativeness, use cases, ethical issues, anticipated adoption and attitude. Four overarching themes were found related to anticipated mediation and use of smart glasses: anticipated influences and behavioral change in yourself by using own smart glasses and influence and behavioral change through others who use smart glasses. CONCLUSIONS This study explored how acceptance and mediation of technology can complement each other in empirical studies. Most known acceptance models do not incorporate phasing in the acceptance process and the current study shows this is relevant. The acceptance of smart glasses seems to follow the process described in diffusion of innovations but seem to contradict the step-by-step sequence over time in decision making. Furthermore, in order to study implications from the mediation perspective, it seemed easier for respondents to evaluate the use of smart glasses by others than evaluate own anticipated use of smart glasses. Results from this study might inform designers from smart glasses about potential implications and future studies can examine the various propositions that can be derived from the results.