🤔 This is pretty obscure, but I think I might be the world leader in wearing an exoskeleton or exosuit while driving to work.

And not just while driving.

I've worn various exos during work, play, weekend activities, meetings, hangouts, and much more—including, most recently, at my kid's rec sports game.

Several years ago, I embraced this mantra: Always Be Testing.

And it has served me, and the people I work with at Vanderbilt and HeroWear, extremely well.

Not because the exos assist with the driving itself, but because we learned so much about real-world comfort and usability during vehicle ingress, egress and usage, as well as range of motion, use in confined spaces, and compatibility when wearing or holding other items, and, more broadly, how the exo fits into the natural flow of daily life.

This has led to some real innovations and multiple patents, but also to some early realizations that the path we were on (or an early prototype we were testing) was actually dead on arrival. Often, it wasn't the biomechanical science; rather, the critical learnings came at the intersection of biomechanics, user needs, and user experience.

Living in the technology, not just testing it during structured studies, has led to some significant insights about design, research priorities, usability, and public perception.

Some of these are things I don't think I would have learned any other way.

If you work with exos or other wearable tech, I highly recommend this approach: learn passively by living in the wearable technology that you (and others) create.

Wear it. Live in it. Use it in public. See what you learn.

#biomechanics #wearables #exoskeletons