This book presents a method for introducing and advancing the use of ubiquitous and wearable computing. The general approach is to balance between the goals of the potential users and the developers in order to create more innovative and more realistic applications. Whereas the users may not yet be aware of technological advances and, as such, not be willing to change their work practices, the developers are not aware of the needs and constraints of the users. The proposed method, called X'treme Prototyping, faces those challenges by a balanced involvement of users and developers during the entire development process. The application of this method in two different case studies shows the applicability as well as the feasibility of the approach. The first case study describes the development of the A-life system, which enhances current avalanche-beacon technology with a contact-free heart-rate sensor based on radar technology. The second case study develops an improvement of training-methods for professional racing skiers by applying wearable sensors for monitoring an athlete.s motion during a run.

Florian Michahelles obtained a M.Sc. (Diplom) in computer science and psychology from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany in 2001. In Spring 2000 Michahelles was also a Sloan Visiting Fellow at MIT Sloan School of Management where he focused his studies on entrepreneurship and management of innovation. In this time he also worked as a MIT E-Lab consultant for a start-up company called MyAlert.com. He joined the Perceptual Computing and Computer Vision Group of ETH Zurich as a research assistant focusing on ubiquitous and wearable computing. There, Michahelles mainly worked on perceptual computing in a joined EU project, called Smart-Its.