research-article

Designing for Workplace Safety: Exploring Interactive Textiles as Personal Alert Systems

Authors:

Miriam Gaissmaier,

Sofie Aschan Eriksson,

Elsa Kosmack Vaara,

Ksenija Komazec,

Ylva FernaeusAuthors Info & Claims

TEI '20: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

Pages 53 - 65

https://doi.org/10.1145/3374920.3374932

Published: 09 February 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Despite various safety regulations and procedures, work accidents remain a significant problem in the global process industry and the Swedish steel industry. To address personal safety and safety culture, wearable alert systems were prototyped and tested with steelworkers in iterative workshops. A resulting design concept, in the form of an interactive textile patch worn on the protective gear, suggests a simple way of transmitting personal alerts using light. A crucial design factor identified is to enable the communication between workers and peers as well as communicating with control room staff. The visual design can positively influence the acceptance of the patch, but its impact on the safety culture cannot yet be assessed. The present study contributes by approaching workplace safety and culture with a new design concept of IoT and e-textile technologies based on the interaction modalities of light, sound, and vibration

References

[1]

Ashrant Aryal, Ali Ghahramani, and Burcin Becerik-Gerber. 2017. Monitoring fatigue in construction workers using physiological measurements. Automation in Construction 82, 154--165.

[2]

Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and John Antanitis. 2012. Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation. In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference. DIS 2012; Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom, June 11 - 15, 2012. ACM, New York, NY, 288.

Digital Library

[3]

Ayah Bdeir. 2009. Electronics as material. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction - TEI '09. ACM Press, New York, New York, USA, 397.

Digital Library

[4]

Guillermo Bernal, Sara Colombo, Mohammed Al Ai Baky, and Federico Casalegno. 2017. Safety++. Designing IoT and Wearable Systems for Industrial Safety through a User Centered Design Approach. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments - PETRA '17. ACM Press, Island of Rhodes, Greece, 163--170.

[5]

Annalisa Bonfiglio, Davide Curone, Emanuele L. Secco, Giovanni Magenes, and Alessandro Tognetti. 2011. Emergency and Work. In Wearable Monitoring Systems, Annalisa Bonfiglio and Danilo de Rossi, Eds. Springer US, Boston, MA, 205--219.

[6]

Sophia Brueckner and Rachel Freire. 2018. Embodisuit. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction - TEI '18. ACM Press, New York, New York, USA, 542--548.

[7]

J.-P Buchweiller, A. Mayer, R. Klein, J.-M Iotti, A. Kusy, D. Reinert, and E. Christ. 2003. Safety of electronic circuits integrated into personal protective equipment (PPE). Safety Science 41, 5, 395--408.

[8]

Alan H.S. Chan and Annie W.Y. Ng. 2009. Perceptions of implied hazard for visual and auditory alerting signals. Safety Science 47, 3, 346--352.

[9]

Dongyi Chen and Michael Lawo. 2017. Smart Textiles and Smart Personnel Protective Equipment. In Smart Textiles, Stefan Schneegass and Oliver Amft, Eds. Human--Computer Interaction Series. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

[10]

Byungjoo Choi, Sungjoo Hwang, and SangHyun Lee. 2017. What drives construction workers' acceptance of wearable technologies in the workplace?: Indoor localization and wearable health devices for occupational safety and health. Automation in Construction 84, 31--41.

[11]

Sara Colombo and Lucia Rampino. 2013. Information embodiment. How products communicate through dynamic sensory features. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces - DPPI '13. ACM Press, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 211.

Digital Library

[12]

Davide Curone, Emanuele L. Secco, Alessandro Tognetti, Giannicola Loriga, Gabriela Dudnik, Michele Risatti, Rhys Whyte, Annalisa Bonfiglio, and Giovanni Magenes. 2010. Smart Garments for Emergency Operators. The ProeTEX Project. IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine 14, 3, 694--701.

Digital Library

[13]

Pelle Ehn. 2008. Participation in Design Things. In Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory Design, Toni Robertson, David Hakken and Jesper Simonsen, Eds. Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, USA, 92--101.

[14]

Tiago Fernández-Caramés and Paula Fraga-Lamas. 2018. Towards The Internet-of-Smart-Clothing: A Review on IoT Wearables and Garments for Creating Intelligent Connected E-Textiles. Electronics 7, 12, 405.

[15]

Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, Paul Hekkert, and Ilpo Koskinen. 2018. Let's Get Divorced: Constructing Knowledge Outcomes for Critical Design and Constructive Design Research. In Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility - DIS '18. ACM Press, New York, New York, USA, 395--397.

Digital Library

[16]

Christopher Frayling. 1993. Research in art and design. Royal College of Art research papers, vol. 1, no. 1. Royal College of Art, London.

[17]

Umberto C. Gatti, Giovanni C. Migliaccio, and Suzanne Schneider. 2011. Wearable Physiological Status Monitors for Measuring and Evaluating Workers' Physical Strain: Preliminary Validation. In Engineers, Zhu et al. (Hg.) -- Computing in Civil Engineering, 194--201.

[18]

Ramyah Gowrishankar, Katharina Bredies, and Salu Ylirisku. 2017. A Strategy for Material-Specific e-Textile Interaction Design. In Smart Textiles, Stefan Schneegass and Oliver Amft, Eds. Human--Computer Interaction Series. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

[19]

Lu Han, Qiang Zhang, Xianxiang Chen, Qingyuan Zhan, Ting Yang, and Zhan Zhao. 2017. Detecting work-related stress with a wearable device. Computers in Industry 90, 42--49.

[20]

International Electrotechnical Commission. 2018. IEC TC 124 Strategic Business Plan (2018). Retrieved July 13, 2019 from https://www.iec.ch/public/miscfiles/sbp/124.pdf.

[21]

International Labour Organization. 2019. Safety and health at work (April 2019). Retrieved July 1, 2019 from https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/safety-and-health-at-work/lang--en/index.htm.

[22]

Jesse V. Jacobs, Lawrence J. Hettinger, Yueng-Hsiang Huang, Susan Jeffries, Mary F. Lesch, Lucinda A. Simmons, Santosh K. Verma, and Joanna L. Willetts. 2019. Employee acceptance of wearable technology in the workplace. Applied Ergonomics 78, 148--156.

[23]

Ilpo K. Koskinen, John Zimmerman, Thomas Binder, Johan Redstrom, and Stephan Wensveen. 2011. Design Research Through Practice. From the lab, field, and showroom. Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier, Waltham, MA.

[24]

Mareike Kritzler, Martin Bäckman, Anders Tenfält, and Florian Michahelles. 2015. Wearable technology as a solution for workplace safety. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia - MUM '15. ACM Press, Linz, Austria, 213--217.

Digital Library

[25]

G. R. Langereis, S. Bouwstra, and W. Chen. 2013. Sensors, actuators and computing systems for smart textiles for protection. In Smart textiles for protection, Roger Chapman, Ed. Woodhead publishing series in textiles. Woodhead Publishing Limited in association with the Textile Institute, Oxford.

[26]

David A. Lombardi, Santosh K. Verma, Melanye J. Brennan, and Melissa J. Perry. 2009. Factors influencing worker use of personal protective eyewear. Accident; analysis and prevention 41, 4, 755--762.

[27]

J. McCann, R. Hurford, and A. Martin. 2005. A Design Process for the Development of Innovative Smart Clothing that Addresses End-User Needs from Technical, Functional, Aesthetic and Cultural View Points. In Ninth IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC'05). IEEE, 70--77.

Digital Library

[28]

Simon Nestler. 2019. Safety-critical human computer interaction. it - Information Technology 0, 0.

[29]

Hasse Nordlöf, Birgitta Wiitavaara, Ulrika Winblad, Katarina Wijk, and Ragnar Westerling. 2015. Safety culture and reasons for risk-taking at a large steel-manufacturing company. Investigating the worker perspective. Safety Science 73, 126--135.

[30]

PiiA. 2018. Process Industrial IT and Automation (2018). Retrieved November 3, 2019 from http://sip-piia.se/en/.

[31]

Irene Posch and Geraldine Fitzpatrick. 2018. Integrating Textile Materials with Electronic Making. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction - TEI '18. ACM Press, New York, New York, USA, 158--165.

Digital Library

[32]

Protex Balti. 2017. Ragnarok 2.0 (2017). Retrieved November 2, 2019 from https://www.ttu.ee/projektid/ragnarok-2/.

[33]

Mary Stergiou-Kita, Elizabeth Mansfield, Randy Bezo, Angela Colantonio, Enzo Garritano, Marc Lafrance, John Lewko, Steve Mantis, Joel Moody, Nicole Power, Nancy Theberge, Eleanor Westwood, and Krista Travers. 2015. Danger zone: Men, masculinity and occupational health and safety in high risk occupations. Safety Science 80, 213--220.

[34]

Swedish Work Environment Authority. 2016. Swedish Work Environment Research 2017--2027 (2016). Retrieved June 15, 2019 from https://www.av.se/globalassets/filer/publikationer/rapporter/swedish-work-environment-research-2017--2027-input-to-the-governments-research-policy-report-2015--18-eng.pdf.

[35]

Montbel Thibaud, Huihui Chi, Wei Zhou, and Selwyn Piramuthu. 2018. Internet of Things (IoT) in high-risk Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) industries. A comprehensive review. Decision Support Systems 108, 79--95.

[36]

Tristupe. 2015. Maxis Waze Safe Mode Kids (2015). Retrieved November 3, 2019 from http://www.tristupe.com/2015/07/maxis-waze-safe-mode-kids-making-drive.html.

[37]

Kanghyeok Yang, Changbum Ahn, Mehmet Vuran, and Hyunsoo Kim. 2016. Sensing Workers Gait Abnormality for Safety Hazard Identification. In Proceedings of the 33rd International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC). International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction (IAARC).

Cited By

Islam SShekhar R(2025)Smart Textiles and Wearable Technology: Opportunities and Challenges in the Production and DistributionUse of Digital and Advanced Technologies in the Fashion Supply Chain10.1007/978-981-97-7528-6_11(267-303)Online publication date: 25-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-7528-6_11
Cuadrado-Cabello NRamón-Lama Ruiz Jde las Heras García de Vinuesa A(2024)The Impact of New Technologies on Occupational Safety and Health from the Point of View of Their Academic InterestRecent Advances and Emerging Challenges in STEM10.1007/978-3-031-64106-0_42(381-391)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64106-0_42
Raman RMitra A(2023)IoT-Enhanced Workplace Safety for Real-Time Monitoring and Hazard Detection for Occupational Health2023 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Innovations in Healthcare Industries (ICAIIHI)10.1109/ICAIIHI57871.2023.10489803(1-5)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICAIIHI57871.2023.10489803
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Designing for Workplace Safety: Exploring Interactive Textiles as Personal Alert Systems
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction techniques
  2. Ubiquitous and mobile computing
    1. Ubiquitous and mobile computing design and evaluation methods

Recommendations

Safety++: Designing IoT and Wearable Systems for Industrial Safety through a User Centered Design Approach
PETRA '17: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments

In this paper, we describe Safety++, an IoT ecosystem of connected wearable elements aimed at improving safety in the workplace in the energy industry. Safety is a major concern for energy companies and, despite the large availability of protective ...
Wearable technology as a solution for workplace safety
MUM '15: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia

Occupational accidents cause physical harm to impacted employees and financial harm to employers. The most effective protection against occupational accidents is the proper usage of personal protective equipment (PPE). A huge variety of wearable sensors ...
Determining the safety culture in a gun factory in Turkey: A fuzzy approach

Safety culture is a very complex phenomenon due to its intangible nature. It is tough to measure and express it with numerical values, as there is no simple indicator to measure it. This paper presents a fuzzy inference system that measures the safety ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

TEI '20: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

February 2020

978 pages

ISBN:9781450361071

DOI:10.1145/3374920

General Chairs:
Elise van den Hoven
University of Technology Sydney (Australia) & Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands)
,
Lian Loke
University of Sydney (Australia)
,
Program Chairs:
Orit Shaer
Wellesley College (USA)
,
Jelle van Dijk
University of Twente (Netherlands)
,
Andrew Kun
University of New Hampshire (USA)

Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 February 2020

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Vinnova - Sweden's innovation agency
SSF - Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research

Conference

TEI '20

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

TEI '20: Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

February 9 - 12, 2020

Sydney NSW, Australia

Acceptance Rates

TEI '20 Paper Acceptance Rate 37 of 132 submissions, 28%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 393 of 1,367 submissions, 29%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

5
Total Citations
View Citations
505
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)37
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)9

Reflects downloads up to 07 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Islam SShekhar R(2025)Smart Textiles and Wearable Technology: Opportunities and Challenges in the Production and DistributionUse of Digital and Advanced Technologies in the Fashion Supply Chain10.1007/978-981-97-7528-6_11(267-303)Online publication date: 25-Feb-2025
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-7528-6_11
Cuadrado-Cabello NRamón-Lama Ruiz Jde las Heras García de Vinuesa A(2024)The Impact of New Technologies on Occupational Safety and Health from the Point of View of Their Academic InterestRecent Advances and Emerging Challenges in STEM10.1007/978-3-031-64106-0_42(381-391)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64106-0_42
Raman RMitra A(2023)IoT-Enhanced Workplace Safety for Real-Time Monitoring and Hazard Detection for Occupational Health2023 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Innovations in Healthcare Industries (ICAIIHI)10.1109/ICAIIHI57871.2023.10489803(1-5)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICAIIHI57871.2023.10489803
Chen ACo D(2022)Workshops in TEI: Development, Evaluation, Exploration, and ImplementationProceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3490149.3505562(1-9)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3490149.3505562
Li YRossmy BHußmann H(2020)Tangible Interaction with Light: A ReviewMultimodal Technologies and Interaction10.3390/mti40400724:4(72)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.3390/mti4040072

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten