Mobile Virtual Work A New Paradigm phần 5 pptx

6 Collaboration in Mobile Virtual Work: a Human Factors View 151

Langan-Fox J, Anglim J, Wilson JR (2004) Mental models, team mental models

and performance: Process, development and future directions. Human Factors

and Ergonomics in Manufacturing 14:331–352

MacCarthy BL, Wilson JR (eds) (2001) Human factors in scheduling and plan￾ning. Taylor and Francis, London

MacCarthy BL, Wilson JR, Crawford S (2001). Human Performance in Industrial

Scheduling: A framework for understanding. Human Factors and Ergonomics

in Manufacturing 11:299–320

Mackay W (2000) Is paper safer? The role of flight strips in air traffic control.

ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction 6:311–340

McNeese M, Salas E, Endsley M (eds) (2001) New Trends in cooperative activi￾ties: Understanding system dynamics in complex environments. Human Fac￾tors and Ergonomics Society, Santa Monica

Morris W, Wilson JR, Koukoulaki T (2004) Developing a participatory approach

to the decision of work equipment: Assimilating lessons from workers’ ex￾periences. TUTB, Brussels

Olson GM, Olson JS (2002) Distance matters. In: Carroll JM. (ed) Human￾computer interaction in the new millennium. Addison-Wesley, New York, pp

397–413

Rogers Y, Ellis J (1994) Distributed cognition: an alternative framework for ana￾lysing and explaining collaborative working. Journal of Information Technol￾ogy 9(2):119–128

Rogers Y, Muller H (2003). Stop making sense: Designing sensor-based interac￾tion to facilitate exploration and reflection. Technical Report Equator-03-002,

Equator. (Submitted to International Journal of Human Computer Studies)

Rönkkö J, Markkanen J, Launonen R, Ferrino M, Gaia E, Basso V, Patel H

D’Cruz M, Laukkanen S (2005). Multi-nodal astronaut virtual training proto￾type. (Submitted to International Journal of Human Computer Studies)

Scott J (2000) Social network analysis. 2P

ndP

edition. SAGE Publications, London

Slamen A, Schock A, Ryan B, Wilson JR (2004) Human factors analysis of the

work of the engineering supervisor. (Restricted report of Network Rail, Lon￾don)

Tromp JG, Steed A, Wilson JR (2003) Systematic usability evaluation and design

issues for collaborative virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and

Virtual Environments 12(3):241–267

Vicente KJ (1999) Cognitive work analyses: towards safe, productive and healthy

computer based work. L. Erlbaum, New Jersey

Wilson JR (2000) Fundamentals of ergonomics. Applied Ergonomics 31:557–567

Wilson JR, D’Cruz MD (2005) Virtual and interactive environments for work of

the future. (Paper to appear in special issue of International Journal of Human

Computer Science)

Wilson JR, Jackson S, Nichols S (2003) Cognitive work investigation and design

in practice: the influence of social context and social work artefacts. In: Holl￾nagel E (ed) Cognitive Task Design, pp 83–98

Wilson JR, Norris BJ, Clarke T, Mills A (2005) Rail human factors. Ashgate,

London

7 Model-based Design of Mobile Work Systems

Ludger Schmidt and Holger Luczak

Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics, RWTH Aachen Uni￾versity, Germany

7.1 Introduction

The fast development in the area of information and communication tech￾nology and especially in broadband internet access and mobile computing

has changed the established ways of communication, learning, entertain￾ment and work in professional and private lives. Undoubtedly, mobile de￾vices, network applications and services offer a wide range of new possi￾bilities. But besides technological feasibility it is not always clear what

features are really essential, useful or handy for a particular person in a

particular work context. Therefore, to create mobile work systems that en￾able efficient and effective work in a new way or improve current work

processes, it is necessary not only to focus on technology, but to look at

the users, their qualifications and tasks, as well as to include aspects of

work organisation in an integrative approach. Especially in the area of mo￾bile work applications, the time to market and the half-life period of prod￾ucts gets shorter and constantly new versions of products are launched.

Accordingly, the time frame for design phases decreases, calling for an ef￾ficient and reliable design process.

Hence, to meet these challenges a structured and model-based frame￾work has been developed that includes a human-centred and task-oriented

design approach. It is supposed to help mobile work systems’ designers to

think about what is required for particular work context in terms of tech￾nology, organisation and personnel. Against the background of trends in

mobile work, this framework is presented in this chapter and illustrated by

a case study to exemplify the proposed design process.

154 Ludger Schmidt and Holger Luczak

7.2 Trends of mobile work in Europe

In 2002 the EU-Commission published the Action Plan “eEurope 2005 –

An information society for all” (Commission of the European Communi￾ties 2002) which identified key targets like the connection to broadband

networks and the review of legislation affecting e-business. Similarly the

German report “Information Society Germany 2006” (Federal Ministry of

Economics and Labour & Federal Ministry of Education and Research

2004) set a focus on a digital economy aimed at growth and competitive￾ness and pointed out that in 2005 75% of the German population should

use the internet and in 2010 50% of all homes should be connected to a

broadband line.

In 2003, more than one out of three EU citizens was an internet user,

whereas Sweden had the highest share of internet users with 57 per 100 in￾habitants. In the EU, there were 80 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 in￾habitants in 2003. Luxembourg (120), Sweden (98), and Italy (95) had the

highest number of subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, Lithuania (62), Latvia

(52), and Poland (46) the least (Eurostat 2004).

The future of work is supposed to demand a high degree of mobility,

multifunctional applications and flexibility concerning the aspects of time

and space. Relevant prognoses and statistics that concentrate on the mobile

market support these requirements. Working persons need to adapt to

working circumstances, which call for flexibility and mobility, for instance

(tele)commuters or moving people.

The technological development is progressing and computer technolo￾gies are becoming smaller as well as more advanced and create various

possibilities of mobile data transfer. Besides offering these options of in￾novative applications and services the current progress presents new per￾spectives and research demands in the field of industrial engineering and

ergonomics.

Actual trends in the development of mobile work can be summarized

according to six aspects characterizing the use of mobile technologies

(Scheer et al. 2001, Pousttchi et al. 2003):

• Mobility

The most obvious advantage of mobile technology is a gain in the free￾dom of movement. The user is not attached to a certain location or to a

fixed frame of time. The freedom of movement will only be ceased if

provision of mobile networks is terminated.

7 Model-based Design of Mobile Work Systems 155

• Ubiquitous access and processing

The term ubiquity refers to the omnipresence of information systems,

thus, ubiquitous access means ad-hoc access to the virtual world from

every spot in the real world. The user is permanently online, no boot

procedure is necessary; the services are applicable at any time and at

any place. Mobile end devices can be taken along everywhere. Further￾more, ubiquitous access provides permanent reception and sending of

data as well as direct data processing.

• Context sensitivity

Context sensitivity means shaping information to the actual needs of the

user. This is also known as tailoring (Rumelhart 1980). Tailoring is to

design information in a way it fits the target group, for example present￾ing different information to a tourist than to a business man when visit￾ing a particular town. The user’s environment can be recorded and

evaluated with mobile technologies. Therefore, user services can be of￾fered for each specific context. For example, for a tourist visiting a city

information about different events can be tailored to location of the per￾son (local context), to the persons actual activity (action-related con￾text), to the time of the day or year (time context) or to personal prefer￾ences like non-smoker, sportsman (personal context). Therefore, local,

action related, temporal and personal contents are to be considered for

designing a mobile work environment.

• Reach ability

Mobile users are connected to information structures at any time. They

cannot only access information, they can also be contacted anywhere.

Pro-active services can be provided by permanent availability, e.g. intel￾ligent agents are supposed to give particular advice. For example these

advices could refer to buying or selling stocks if the stock quotation

falls beneath a threshold. The permanent availability of users enables a

synchronous communication among users. The availability is realized

technologically by the infrastructure of mobile networks.

• Remote control

The internet already provides the possibility to operate or configure sta￾tionary machines from far distances. Mobile end devices are supposed

to control other devices in close distance via for example an infrared or

Bluetooth radio interface. Medium and far distances can be by-passed

by WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), GPRS (General Packet Ra￾dio Service) and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Sys￾tem). The device that is being controlled can also be mobile, for exam-