Assessment of the Usability of an Innovative Assistive Swimsuit

Wearable systems, or even more simply wearables, are a wide variety of body worn objects and accessories that in the last decade have been introduced in our availability. The aim of this paper is to propose a structured methodology to conduct usability analysis with wearables and describe it through its application on a wearable system for water rehabilitation. AQTIVO is a new corset co-design with users (patients and caregivers) and to validate its usability we carried out a test with 30 subjects and 10 caregivers in 2 water rehabilitation sites. The AQTIVO usability was very satisfactory. Young users. Indeed, it allowed new rehabilitation exercises (flotation, prone transfer). In adults, AQTIVO system improved the buoyancy task provided more support in dynamic tasks. Support from the caregiver was also reduced by using the brace in all subjects. Also the aesthetics was positively evaluated.