Experimental Conditions

In order to find the difference, one contrasts the case of the wearable with something else:

Do wearable computers help people keep appointments?
How well do people keep appointments without wearables?
Do subliminal cues improve memory performance?
How well do people do on the memory task without subliminal cues?

These contrasting cases are called "conditions". The one that involves a wearable might typically be considered the "experimental condition", and the other one would be called the "control condition".

next: null hypotheses

Experimental Design for Wearable Computing -- The Null Hypothesis

The Null Hypothesis

The idea that "there is no difference" between performance on experimental and control conditions is often called "the null hypothesis".

Do wearable computers help people keep appointments?
How well do people keep appointments without wearables?
They keep appointments about as well either way.
Do subliminal cues improve memory performance?
How well do people do on the memory task without subliminal cues?
The subliminal cues have no effect on the memory task.

In research, one frequently hopes to reject the null hypothesis.

next: experiment