Abstract
The Industry 4.0 paradigm requires not only equipping the shop floor and the workforce with new digital tools, but also ensuring that digital technologies are well accepted and adopted by workers. This is achieved through the active involvement of those who will be affected by these new digital technologies. However, the involvement of end-users and workers in the design process is often confined to test fully developed solutions. Rarely are the workers fully involved in the design process, from preliminary research to the co-design of the proposed technologies. As such, and in order to involve workers on the design of a digital companion for shop floor operators, we applied a Participatory Design approach, with mixed-methods, consisting of fieldwork observations, interviews, and exploratory workshops with workers and other relevant stakeholders in order to understand their needs and desires in the context of Industry 4.0. These activities were conducted remotely and in situ, and aimed to identify issues concerning the worker, the workplace, and concerns regarding their physical and mental well-being. In this paper, we describe the process of designing the worker companion-the methods, main insights from the user research activities, and an initial prototype.
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Acknowledgements
The present study was developed in the scope of the Project Augmented Humanity [POCI-010247-FEDER-046103], financed by Portugal 2020, under the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program, the Lisbon Regional Operational Program, and by the European Regional Development Fund.
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Ribeiro, J., Santos, C., Oliveira, E., Melo, R. (2022). Designing a Worker Companion - Design Implications from On-Site and Remote Participatory Design in the Context of Industry 4.0. In: Fui-Hoon Nah, F., Siau, K. (eds) HCI in Business, Government and Organizations. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13327. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05544-7_31
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