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002 WWDU 2002

Work With Display Units

World Wide Work

Proceedings of the 6th International Scientific Conference

on Work With Display UnitsWWDU 2002 - World Wide Work

Berchtesgaden, May 22-25, 2002

H. Luczak

A.E. Çakir

G. Çakireditors

publisherERGONOMIC Institut für Arbeits- und Sozialforschung

Forschungsgesellschaft mbH • Berlin

Proceedings of the Conference WWDU 2002 World Wide Work - May 22-25, 2002 - Berchtesgaden

1

Opening Plenary Session

Keynotes

Visual Diplays -Developments of the Past,the Present and the Future

Holger Luczak, Olaf Oehme

Stress at Work and Occupational Health:The ICT Perspective

Bengt Knave

Enabling World Wide Workin the Digital Economy

Halimahtun M. Khalid

Quality of Working Life and Healthin a Networked Society

Pascale Carayon

Electronic Product Development (ePD)for Mass Customization

Martin Helander, Jianxin Jiao

Visual Displays – Developments of the Past, the Present and the Future


2 Holger LUCZAK, Olaf Oehme


Holger LUCZAK, Olaf OehmeChair and Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics, RWTH Aachen, Bergdriesch 27, D-52062 Aachen, Germany, E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

In the last years, most of the developments of displays were characterized as developments for desktop, lap-top or handheld computers. But all these technologies correspond with extrapolated concepts of currentmetaphors. However, computers and their applications will develop further and some of these developments(e.g. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality) require visual displays with characteristics very different from theones found on standard PCs today. This article will show various trends of display evolution – from the past tothe present to future challenges.

1 Introduction

Since the existence of mankind, humans invent andbuild tools to make live easier and more comfortable.For example, one of the first display devices to measuretime was the sundial 3000 years ago in Babylon. One ofthe disadvantages of this tool, however, was the impos-sibility to measure the time during the night or when theweather was cloudy. Moreover, the first sundials wereplaced on public places, so that people had to take theeffort to move themselves to there in order to check thetime. Later developments of clocks (also on public plac-es) eliminated the disadvantages of the sundial. Churchclocks could not only show the time under any weathercondition and at any daytime, but they could also an-nounce the time acoustically by bridging distances up toa few kilometers. The following developments are well-known – from the grandfather clock and the fob watch,continuing with the first analogous and digital wristwatches to today´s high performance mobile “clocks”.They do not only display the time, but they are also mul-tifunctional, e.g. some can measure the heart rate, oth-ers can be used as pocket calculators, stop watches,databases, diaries or even replace cellphones etc.

These technical developments raise many ergonomicissues. In this article a very general overview of today´sdisplay technologies will be given in order to demon-strate the state of the art for discussion of ergonomic is-sues in this field.

2 Technical developments

2.1 From the light bulb to Augmented Reality

With the invention of the light bulb the first digital pos-sibility to change electric power into a defined artificiallight was created. It was then possible to display twodifferent stages with lamps, e.g. a conference room as“occupied” or as “free”. Also the first freely program-mable computer of the world, Konrad Zuse’s Z3, usedlamps as output to display four decimal digits with dec-imal point.

The next generation of computers, with line-oriented in-terfaces, used monochrome Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs)

to display alphanumerical characters. A CRT systemati-cally consists of a glass bulb, a cathode, an electrongun, deflection coils, a mask and a phosphor coating.The electron beam is directed line-by-line across thescreen and stimulates the phosphor coating to lightenup for a short moment.

With the invention of full-screen interfaces, CRTs whichcould display grayscales, colors and graphics becamecommon. Technically the grayscales of CRTs were real-ized with a modulated intensity of the light which thevoltage applied to the cathode. The more voltage wasapplied, the brighter the light shone.

Color representation is reached by the kind of phosphorthat is used and the electron beam. The phosphorus lay-er is made of a "triad" in the form of an array, with everytriad consisting of a dot of each of the colors red, greenand blue. Therefore, color monitors have three electronguns. The electron beam of each of them only falls onone colored dot in each triad (Bosman, 1989). Threedots, each of one triad, are one pixel. With the help ofdifferent light intensities almost every mixture of colorsis possible.

With today’s direct manipulation operating systems,displays which can generate graphics with a high reso-lution and millions of colors are the standard for the per-sonal computers. But for various devices the CRT is toobig and heavy to use, e.g. Laptop Computers. In thesecases Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) are often used.

LCDs consist of two glass plates with microscopic linesor grooves on the inner surface and a liquid crystal layer,located in-between them. Liquid crystal materials donot emit light of their own so that some means of exter-nal or back illumination have to be provided. The physi-cal principle is based on the anisotropic material quali-ties of liquid crystals. When substances are in an oddstate – partly liquid and partly solid – their moleculestend to point the same way, like the molecules in a sol-id, but can also move around to different positions, likethe molecules in a liquid. This means that liquid crystalsare neither a solid nor a liquid but they are closer to a liq-uid state. In an electric field liquid crystals change theiralignment and therefore their translucence. If no volt-



Holger LUCZAK, Olaf Oehme 3

age is set up, the light can pass through and the pixelsappear bright (see figure 1). In areas where a voltage isset up, the pixels become dark (Matschulat, 1999).

Results from experiments have shown, that people ex-pressed a better readability and less mental strain usinga LCD instead of a CRT. Other advantages of LCDs aretheir minimal power consumption, their operation atlow voltages, their longevity in normal environmentsand the fact that displays may either be viewed directlyin transmission or reflection, or may be projected ontolarge screens (Bosman, 1989).

There are also interesting developments of other tech-nologies for special applications. There are for examplePlasma Display Panels (PDPs) with a clear daylight rep-resentation, or electronic papers with a very low powerconsumption, possibly extending the battery lifetime ofdevices with such displays so that they last for monthsor even years.

However, computers and their applications are develop-ing continuously and some of these developments re-quire visual displays with characteristics very differentfrom the ones found today on standard PCs. One of thelatest developments is Augmented Reality. AugmentedReality (AR) means the enrichment of the real worldwith virtual information (Azuma, 1997). Thus, repair in-structions for a machine tool or important installationtips can directly be blended into the workers field ofview.

Nowadays, Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) with inte-grated LCDs as well as half-silvered mirrors are used torealize the described superimposition of the real worldwith virtual information. Nevertheless, all these HMDshave some disadvantages, e.g. the bad see through fea-

tures (like looking through sunglasses), the big size andthe weight, or the limited field of view (FOV) of about 30degrees. Actions taking place outside the FOV cannotbe perceived by the user due to the construction of theHMD. This can evoke the workers’ rejection especiallyin industrial areas (Oehme et al., 2001).

The disadvantages mentioned above show that the cur-rent HMD technology is not being judged to be suffi-cient for the requirements of the 21st Century. Thismakes it necessary to develop new display generations,such as the “Virtual Retinal Display" (VRD) technology(also called "Retinal Scanning Display" - RSD). In contrastto the HMD described above, the VRD addresses theretina directly with a single stream of pixels. The imageis set up as in a conventional cathode ray tube system:the laser is directed line by line across the display area(in this case the retina). The line diversion - horizontaland vertical - is reached by the use of rotary or oscillatingmirrors. Light output from the diode pumped solid-statelasers is modulated according to the input signal, andthe red, green and blue light is combined. This com-bined white light is then raster-scanned onto the retinato create an image.

Besides that, an additional projection surface inside theglasses becomes unnecessary. Due to the higher lightintensity of a laser, the half-silvered mirrors commonlyused for HMDs can be optimized to a maximum trans-lucence. Thus, the “see-through qualities” of the glass-es can be improved. Furthermore, the display’s maxi-mum resolution is no longer determined by the toler-ances of manufacturing of the display pixels, but by thecontrol logic and the quality of deflection mirrors.

2.2 From stationary-placed to handheld and

mobile devices

In recent years, there has been a general shift fromdesktop based general-purpose computers to moretask-specific information appliances. Mobile phones(cellphones) and personal digital assistants (PDAs) havebecome more and more the focus of research as theircommercial dominance has grown (Schmidt, 1999).

Display technologies are a significant component ofPDAs and cellphones. Nowadays, people take theirphones and PDAs with them everywhere, using themin various environments and situations to perform dif-ferent tasks (Schmidt, 1999). Because of this high mo-bility such displays must have a small size, be light-weight and have a low energy consumption. This is alsothe reason why most of the displays for mobile units aremonochrome LCDs. The displays must also be shock-and weather-resistant.

The main problems with such units are resolution andcolor (Weiland, 2000). The resolution of the displays isrestricted because of the described small size and themanufacturing abilities of LCDs. Color LCDs are not thatcommon for handheld devices, not because of produc-tion problems, but due to the high energy consumption.

Figure 1: Principle of operation of a twisted nematicLCD



4 Holger LUCZAK, Olaf Oehme

So color PDAs have a shorter operating time until a re-quired recharge.Technologies for use in industrial domains, like HMDsor VRDs (see also section 2.1), will be improved up tothe level of desktop displays (Weiland, 2000). However,the current HMDs are either too big or too expensivebecause of their prototype character. For this reason itwill take some time before such devices can be used asa real alternative to LCDs. Another reason are the miss-ing interaction concepts for HMDs. Usually, people in-teract with a PDA by means of a touch screen. With anHMD such an interaction is not possible because of theHMD being too close to the eyes.

2.3 From one-dimensional to stereoscopic

representation

Visual displays can be distinguished by the spatial di-mensionality of the image generated and the informa-tion displayed. Indicator lamps, either lamps or LEDs, are referred to asone-dimensional (even if this classification is not correctin the strict sense, since lamps and LEDs have spatialextension). They can be found as indicators for “poweron” or hard drive activity on common computers. Todayit is still a common way to increase the amount of dis-playable information by grouping a number of binary dis-plays into one unit. The 7-segment display in many cus-tom displays is an example of this approach (e.g. inpocket calculators).Most displays used for computers are two-dimensional,e.g. the CRT or flat panel displays (LCDs) or the displaysfound on handheld devices. In the last few years three-dimensional displays weredeveloped and applied in selected settings, e.g. in Virtu-al Reality applications. A Virtual Reality (VR) system is acomputer you can no longer see (Biocca, 1998). In con-trast to the AR system mentioned above, in a Virtual Re-ality system the viewer completely immerses into an ar-tificial "virtual" world, having absolutely no view of thereal world anymore. The left and the right eye are pro-vided with different image information. Thus, a three-di-mensional view can be guaranteed. A commonly used output tool is the HMD, already men-tioned above in connection with AR. Two little displays(LCD or CRT) produce the image and present it via aspecial optic to the eyes. In this case, no half-silveredmirrors are used. Of course, there arise a few problemsdue to the fact that not everybody has the same eye dis-tance (inter pupillary distance, IPD). This means, thatthe HMD has to be adaptable to the IPD, because oth-erwise this would cause differences in depth percep-tion. At the moment, the FOV is limited to an extension of120˚ x 60˚, but the human field of view is much larger.

A bigger FOV affords a higher amount of pixels per inch,but nowadays it is limited by production capabilities.

Projector systems can reproduce large images of VR-scenes on the front or backside of one or more screens.Stereoscopic images for both eyes are projected eitheralternately or with different polarization at the sametime. By using the first method, so-called shutter glass-es alternately block the view of the eyes so that eacheye perceives only the image intended for it. In this caseit is a disadvantage that either the refresh rate per eyeor the vertical resolution is being halved.

Using the other method, both images – for the right aswell as for the left eye – are projected at the same timewith different alignments (polarization). The images areseparated by polarization glasses.

A further developed projector is the so-called "CAVE"(Computer Animated Virtual Environment). It consists ofa cube with several projection panels on which the im-ages are projected from behind. Depending on the con-struction you can distinguish a C3 (two walls and thefloor), C4, C5 or C6 CAVE, respectively. A CAVE pro-vides space for small groups, but only one person canbe tracked and the stereoscopic view can be optimizedfor it. The other persons perceive distortions, especiallyon corners and edges.

However, all the presented stereoscopic devices needspecial eye glasses to allow a stereoscopic view. Thereare also some first prototypes of so-called autostereo-scopic displays, which allow a normal three dimensionalview by tracking the eye position and steer the correctinformation to each eye per prism (D4D, 2002).

2.4 From representation to assistance

devices

In former developments the displays were only a purerepresentation device with restricted interaction possi-bilities. A computer monitor was just a simple outputdevice for the computer. But computers become small-er and faster. Hence, computers and displays willmerge and allow new ways of human computer interac-tion possibilities. Moreover, calculating performanceswill arise drastically with the new generation of high per-formance computers. This means that computers arebecoming more "intelligent”.

One possible application is the “Intelligent AugmentedReality Agent” for the technical service area as de-scribed in Luczak (2000) and which is investigated in theARVIKA project (Arvika, 2002). As soon as the problemis located, a wearable AR-system can be offered, bywhich the mechanic can be effectively supported duringinstallation and disassembly. Step by step the workingprocess can be displayed into the workers field of viewrespectively via animation. Confirming the end of one



Holger LUCZAK, Olaf Oehme 5

work step, the next one follows via the display(figure 2).

3 Conclusion and outlook

During the last few years, far reaching developmentsconcerning new display types as well as new computertechnologies could be observed. They allow applica-tions which had been unexpected until now. These newapplications are often technology-driven and human-ori-ented consequences of these new ways of interactionand are often underestimated.

Nevertheless, it is possible to name certain scenarios inthe context of the TOP-Approach:

The technological development will not stop. The de-scribed AR approach to directly stimulate the retinal re-ceptors gives way to the assumption that other recep-tors and even brain cells can be directly triggered in thefuture. Thus, it is imaginable that conventional displayswill cease to exist and are being replaced by chipswhich can directly control nervous centers of the brainand create a virtual image.

In recent years, a noticeable trend as well for flexibilityof working hours (work time models) as for flexibility ofwork-place (telecommuting) can be observed. This en-hancement of autonomy and flexibility of the employ-ees requires not only territorially independent work con-cepts but also mobile computers which are able to ac-quire up-to-date company data throughout the worldand thus allow worldwide networking.

The constant gains regarding speed linked with the re-duction of the size of computers makes it possible thatfuture technologies will be more intelligent. This will al-low computers to support the human being while cop-ing with routine processes and simple thinking tasks.

Thus, little electronic “Heinzelmännchen” (lepre-chauns) can avoid date-collisions between private andbusiness appointments and let his “master” becomeaware of this fact by directly listening to the ongoingconversations and by analyzing his appointment struc-ture. Such new display technologies – of course – needa more human-like multimodal interface in order to com-municate more naturally.

4 References

ARVIKA (2002): Homepage of the ARVIKA-Consortium: http://www.arvika.de/ 2002

Azuma, R. (1997): A Survey of Augmented Reality. Presence,vol. 6 (4), pp. 355-385.

Biocca, F.A. & Rolland, J.P. (1998): Virtual Eyes Can RearrangeYour Body: Adaption to Visual Displacement in See-ThroughHead-Mounted Displays. In: Presence, vol. 7 (3), pp. 262-277.

Bosman, D. (ed.) (1989): Display Engineering: Conditioning,Technologies, Applications. Amsterdam: Elesevier SciencePublishers.

D4D (2002): Homepage of the Dresden 3D GmbH: http://www.dresden3d.com/ 2002

Luczak, H. ; Wiedenmaier, S. ; Oehme, O. ; Schlick, C. (2000):Augmented Reality in Design, Production and Service - Re-quirements and Approach. In: Marek, T.; Karwowski, W.: Man-ufacturing Agility and Hybrid Automation - III, Proceedings ofthe HAAMAHA 2000, 2000.

Matschulat, H. (1999): Lexikon der Monitor-Technologie.Aachen: Elektor-Verlag, 1999

Microvision (2000): Homepage Microvision Inc.: http://www.mvis.com/

Oehme, O ; Wiedenmaier, S. ; Schmidt, L. ; Luczak, H. (2001):Empirical Studies on an Augmented Reality User Interface fora Head Based Virtual Retinal Display. In: Smith, J. M. ; Salv-endy, G. (Hrsg.): Systems, Social and Internationalization De-sign Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction. Volume 1 ofthe Proceedings of the Human Computer Interaction Interna-tional (HCII) 2001, New Orleans, August 5-10. New Yersey :Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, S. 1026-1030

Schmidt, A., Aidoo, K.A., Takaluoma, A., Tuomela, U., Laer-hoven, K. & Velde, W. (1999): Advanced Interaction in Con-text. In: Gellersen, H.W. (ed.). Handheld and Ubiquitous Com-puting – First International Symposium, HUC´99, Karlsruhe,September 1999.

Weiland, W., Zachary, W. & Stokes, J. (2000): Personal Wear-able Computer Systems. In: Proceedings of IEA 2000 / HFES2000 Congress, 2000, July 29 through August 4, pp 721-715.

Figure 2: Intelligent AR Agent

Stress at Work and Occupational Health: The ICT Perspective


6 Bengt KNAVE


Bengt KNAVE The Swedish National Labour Market Board, Drottninggatan 108, SE-11399 Stockholm, Sweden,E-mail: [email protected],se

1 The ever changing work life

Work life is constantly changing. Not only the work itselfchanges, but also our opinion on work changes. Nowwe know that a good work environment should not onlybe healthy and safe. It should also encourage personaland professional development, job satisfaction and per-sonal fulfillment, which all contribute to improved workquality and productivity. We know that the way work isorganised is of importance, and that the situation in thelabour market affects the work, the worker and theworker’s health and well-being. In my contribution to-day I will consider different aspects of this developmentof work life, and pay special attention to one of the mostimportant and common occupational health problemstoday: stress, and how it is related to the ICT society,that is the work with display units.

2 Stress, downsizing of companies and unemployment

In a recent study on stress symptoms ”a feeling of gen-eral irritation” was found to be most common, followedby headaches, depression and sleep difficulties. On aquestion on which were the eliciting stress factors”high work load” was most common, followed by”short delivery times”, ”no influence at work”, ”nosupport from manager”, ”bad working hours”, and”worry for employment”. During the 90’ies, especiallythe first part of it, the general welfare in many countrieswas influenced by a severe, world-wide economic re-cession. Many companies had to downsize, and unem-ployment rates increased dramatically. It is well-known that it is a trauma to be unemployed.However, also workers still at work feel the high unem-ployment rates. So, as a consequence of the recessionenterprises downsized and work pace and work stressincreased. Nobody complained because of risk of losingthe job. As a paradox sick leaves diminished - when be-ing sick they nevertheless went to the job because offear of losing it. During the late 90ies the labour marketin many countries recovered, and the rate of unemploy-ment was steadily dropping, and has now reached a po-litically acceptable low level. However, the latest statis-tics of reported work-related injuries and diseases showa marked increase. Among the work-related diseasesthose indicated as caused by organisational and socialfactors increased the most, and considerably more thanhalf of these cases were diagnosed to be related tostress.

3 Lessons from the past – Challenges for tomorrow

It is interesting to note in this matter the observation byan historian of ideas (Johannisson: Nostalgia, 2001).She points at the symptoms similarities of what we seehappen today among employees suffering from stressand what happened one hundred years ago in the tran-sition phase between the farming and industrial societ-ies. Today we live in another transition phase; the onebetween the industrial society and the ICT society. Inboth transition cases large population groups have toadapt to quite new work life skills and experiences,which may be difficult for many of us, without propereducation and training, and which may result in stressreactions.So, what is the remedy today for the stress at work? Letme quote a former Director General of the Swedish So-cial Insurance Board (Sherman, 2002). ”…the increasedstress and sick leaves are a reaction of what happenedin the 90’ies when companies were ”slimmed”, andwork intensities increased. Nobody could expect me tobelieve that the 325 000 employees more on sick leavetoday than five years ago, are sick in an objective sense.This does not mean that they should be sent back towork, unless we change the work itself. Burn-out andstress are symptoms on a diseased society, where peo-ple have been pressed over their capacities”.

4 … the integrated occupational health concept…

Occupational health was initially a matter for physiciansonly. By and by new groups came in: nurses, engineers,and hygienists. Today topics within ergonomics andwork organisation are included, and the ”integrated”occupational health area even borders to labour marketissues.It is easy to realise the interrelationships between med-icine, hygiene and ergonomics. Work organisation de-fines the contents of the work and how it is distributedamong the employees (”right person for the rightwork”). ”Theoretical” work organisation discusses, forinstance, where and when the employee comes in thedecision hierarchy; is given the possibilities for life-longlearning; and may evaluate work loads and risks for ill-health. More practical ”projects” may include ”Stressand Health”, ”Conditions for Human Service Work”,”Industry and the Human Resource”, ”Gender andWork”, ”Life-long Learning” and ”Work and Culture”. Labour market issues are somewhat more peripheral,however important for the employee. Examples onpractical projects are ”Job Creation”, ”Labour Law”and ”Social Economics”. Some of the labour market



Bengt KNAVE 7

topics overlap with work organisation, which in turnoverlap with ergonomics, which in turn overlap withmedicine, etc. There are reasons to believe that the integrated occupa-tional health concept will be a leading star for the futureoccupational health development. The developmentwithin the European Union (EU) points in this direction.Employability, entrepreneurship, adaptability and equalopportunities are the four ”pillars” in the EU 1998Guidelines.

5 … but don’t forget the ”old” and well-known WWDU hazards…

It is easy to understand from what is said above that oc-cupational health is a growing field today, covering abroad panorama of different topics, where research,practice and prevention go hand in hand. Overall, and inaddition to stress, musculo-skeletal disorders, eye dis-comfort, the possible effects of physical factors such asthe low-frequency EMFs must not be forgotten. Even at office work places there are new chemicals, thelong-term and low-dose toxicity of which we do notknow. It should further be reminded that recent assess-ments by the International Agency for Research on Can-cer (IARC) now classify the low-frequency residentialEMFs as possible risk factors for childhood leukemia,which could be a signal for future occupational concern.

6 Going back to the 1986 WWDU Conference in Stockholm

It is interesting to go back to the proceedings of firstWWDU Conference 14 years ago. In the preface Iwrote: ”When we announced our Conference (i.e. in1983), some people said: 1986, why do you wait until1986 – most probably there will be no problems withthe VDUs then!” How wrong this prophecy was! To-day, recent studies by ILO indicate that 10% of thework force suffers from stress, and conclude thatstress is ”the major threat to health in the modernworld”. I would like to add that the ”modern world”equals the ICT society, which in turn is working by using”display units”, irrespective if this means reading youre-mails on the VDT screen or, or communicating by mo-bile phones.

Going back again to the 1986 proceedings you will findthat already then emphasis was put on work organisa-tion, stress and monotony. We did not know then, how-ever, what was going to happen in the 90’ies when la-bour market changes drastically altered work life condi-tions. We did not then anticipate that the ICT as suchcould be the prerequisite for an apparent developmentof stress at work – in times of worldwide welfare andeconomic recessions.

Enabling World Wide Work In The Digital Economy


8 Halimahtun M. KHALID


Halimahtun M. KHALID Institute of Design and Ergonomics Application, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 94300 Kota Samarahan,Sarawak, Malaysia,E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

This keynote paper addresses the issue of World Wide Work (WWW) as it evolves today. It highlights selecthuman factors enablers of WWW, and discusses emerging concerns that may become blocking factors tosuccessful WWW. Malaysia’s model of the Multimedia Super Corridor exemplifies WWW within an industri-ally developing context, and the VCODE system as a tool for WWW implementation.

1 Introduction

Groups of managers from around the world cometogether via the Internet to learn general manage-ment principles and to work on projects of relevanceto their companies. The participants are located in26 different countries and nine time zones. Theywork together in small teams, using a variety of col-laborative technologies available to support theirwork together.

De Sanctis et al. 2001: 80

The above scenario typifies knowledge workers in theDigital Economy – a part of a shifting matrix of transientteams formed for specific tasks out of their own com-pany and other agile collaborators. Standards and Net-available building blocks enable these teams to pull to-gether common group working tools and to configurethem to support the processes designed by each teamfor itself. They spend most of the time in a base officewhere there are no permanent desks but use a range ofpurpose-designed meeting, group working and socialfacilities. They work 40% at home, and 30% on the pre-mises of their clients and collaborators, while increasinguptake of advanced high quality videoconferencing facil-ities is diminishing the need for travel.

Essentially this describes World Wide Work (WWW) inthe New or Digital Economy. In the Old Economy,WWW would mean working together face to face in thesame physical location. In the third millennium, WWWimplies working and collaborating remotely in a con-nected work environment enabled by Information andCommunication Technology (ICT).

The acronym WWW as used in this paper means WorldWide Work, while reference to the ubiquitous WorldWide Web shall be just the Web. This acronym switch-ing is not intended to confuse readers as WWW in theDigital Economy is enabled via the Web, besides othercollaborative technologies. To a certain extent, the twomay be considered synonymous.

There are several emerging trends of the Digital Econo-my: the sharing of knowledge through various applica-tions, the use of appropriate technology and methods tocreate virtual marketplaces and virtual organisations,the management and organisation of knowledge intosystems or processes, and the enhancement of human

capital (competencies) to sustain knowledge (Khalid,2000a).

Features that may characterize WWW include: First, agradual shift from working face-to-face to virtual work-ing. Also, there may be a shift from asynchronous dis-tributed interaction (e.g. email) to synchronous and real-time interaction (e.g. videoconferencing). Second, theincreased use of leading-edge computer, communica-tion and information technologies, and the possible mi-gration from wired to wireless networks. Third, the cre-ation of virtual teams with groupware support for virtualcollaboration. Fourth, growing interest in global culturesand politics. Fifth, improving usability of collaborativesystems and user interfaces, and building trust and se-curity within the networked communities. Finally, build-ing dynamic digital leadership and implementing effec-tive work management philosophies that are tailored to-ward enhancing customer satisfaction in a rapidlychanging market economy.

The recent World Engineers’ Convention 2000 identi-fied five indicators that may impact the future of work:(1) globalization and new technologies, (2) cooperationand work organization, (3) education and know-howtransfer, (4) employment relationships, and (5) futuremarkets, products and services. Enabling it all is the ef-fective use of ICT and innovations, as well as continu-ous learning.

This paper shall focus on WWW in collaborative engi-neering of product development. Malaysia’s mega-ini-tiative, the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project isdescribed as an active implementation of WWW andthe VCODE (Virtual Collaboration in Product Design)system as a tool for enabling WWW.

1.1 Working apart together

Organisations that are involved in the design and devel-opment of new products have to adopt flexible, dis-persed methods of working to meet the numerous andvaried demands of the global marketplace. Connectedthrough ICT, manufacturing companies will design newproducts in direct collaboration over engineering net-works, involving multidisciplinary engineering and de-sign teams. The network may enable: (1) worldwide ac-cess to engineering and design information, (2) the es-tablishment of unbounded information logistics, (3) the



Halimahtun M. KHALID 9

establishment of virtual design studios, and (4) 24 hourengineering around the world. The main objectives of WWW in this context are: tospeed up product development, to access the bestcompetencies, and to make use of the knowledge andknow how of the specific markets. The phenomenon ofWWW may be well illustrated within mass customiza-tion and global supply chain (e.g. Tseng, 2000; Kini &Sasikumar, 2001). In particular, supply chain manage-ment in a dynamic, demand-driven environment re-quires ICT-enabled connectivity, cooperation, and coor-dination between players within an industry and acrossindustry (Christiaanse & Kumar, 2000). A major chal-lenge, however, is the coordination and management ofthe worldwide distributed engineering and designteams (Bichler, 2000).

1.2 Technology enablers

The collaboration marketplace has been evolving overthe last 10 years, delivering technologies that enable co-ordination and information sharing, virtual meetings,and more recently virtual collocation. The promise ofthese technologies is to improve organisational ability tocollaborate, coordinate, and share information in orderto facilitate inter- and intra-organisational teams (Deus,2000). ICT impacts WWW in product development, engineer-ing and design processes in various ways (Luczak et al.,1997; Lea et al., 1997; Anderl et al., 1998; Willaert et al.,1998):• the ability to use new communication capabilities,

such as multimedia communication, computer sup-ported cooperative work (CSCW) methods, andconcurrent design/ simultaneous engineering meth-ods as a source for the creation of new collabora-tion methods,

• availability of new and integrated application soft-ware tools for engineering and design, rapid proto-typing technologies, planning and scheduling, andproduction,

• the ability to apply new product development man-agement tools in the product life cycle,

• the creation of new project-oriented and team-based organisational structures, and

• the introduction of new workflow concepts forstructuring the tasks and introducing work proce-dures.

The next wave of development in virtual collaborationtechnologies address virtual collocation or “place-based” collaboration environments. These persistentenvironments integrate people, communications, andshared data into a shared virtual space. Some key prop-erties of such environments include: (1) rich communi-cations (e.g. text chat and audio/video conferencing), (2)shared document store to make documents and otherdata available to others, (3) tailorable virtual spaces toprovide the location and context for the collaboration, (4)conference management for managing chat, audio/vid-eo, and other conferences within the collaboration con-

text, and (5) presence awareness so that users areaware of others that are available in the collaborative en-vironment (Deus, 2000).

In addition to technology, WWW enablers include teamcollaboration and technology readiness, and the abilityto share ‘common ground’.

2 Human factors enablers of WWW

2.1 Team collaboration and technology

readiness

Organisations that use collaborative technologies ex-pect to share resources, manage relationships, andbring dispersed skills and knowledge to bear on jointprojects that span global operations. Yet employeescomplain they are not motivated to use the technology,do not have the time or skills, or do not see the rewardsfor participating (Qureshi & Zigurs, 2001: 85). The mostdifficult challenge at the organisational level is that ofdealing with organisational culture and readiness to sup-port collaborative operations.

Groupware and collaborative technologies may bereadily introduced in communities and organisationsthat have a culture of sharing and collaboration. In thesecontexts, the users would be ready for a technologythat may not even deliver its promise. In order for an or-ganisation to be able to successfully use collaborationtechnologies on an enterprise scale, the network andsystems infrastructure must be able to support the re-quirements of the collaboration tools. Real-time confer-encing, for example, requires available bandwidth andquality of service from the network.

While the emphasis on collaborative design is frequent-ly placed on the technological aspects, it is importantthat the assembled teams will be productive while us-ing the technology. Since the various teams and individ-uals may not have met face-to-face, communicationthrough such means as e-mail, telephone, facsimile andvideo conferencing need to be established on a contin-uous basis to build familiarity and rapport. It is also ben-eficial to monitor the morale of the team, as teams thatdo not mesh well together will have a difficult time put-ting a design plan together.

In a collaborative environment, members interact bysharing common information and they bring their ownpersonal viewpoints to the integrated vision of the prod-uct design process. Functional, aesthetic, environmen-tal and life-cycle issues are each characterised by differ-ent viewpoints, goals and constraints that have to bebalanced with appropriate tradeoffs (Crabtree et al.,1997). Negotiation, therefore, is characteristic of collab-orative design (e.g. Kersten & Noronha, 1999). In someinstances, the negotiation process may be controlled athigher levels in the organization involving various stake-holders (Bond & Ricci, 1992).

2.2 Common ground

Understanding a group’s work practice is inherentlymore difficult than understanding a single person’s




work practice. The same individual will relate to othersin a groupware context in quite different ways, depend-ing on their personalities, the dynamics of their group,the organisational structures, and their politics.

Effective communication between members of a teamrequires that the communicative exchange takes placewith respect to some level of common ground, that is,knowledge participants have in common, and they areaware that they have it in common (Clark & Brennan,1991). To obtain common ground, the collaborative me-dia should support:

• copresence - same physical environment, • visibility - visible to each other, • audibility - speech, • contemporarily - message received immediately, • simultaneity - both speakers can send and receive, • sequentiality - turns cannot get out of sequence, • reviewability - able to review others’ messages and • revisability - can revise messages before they are

sent.

In addition, many collaborative design tasks are tightlycoupled, and typically require frequent complex com-munication among the group members with short feed-back loops and multiple streams of information. Tech-nology, at least today, does not support rapid back andforth in conversation or awareness and repair of ambi-guity.

While these new collaborative media promise to reducecost and time of information exchange, they have othereconomical, sometimes subtle implications on collabo-rative design processes, such as the costs of knowl-edge sharing and the incentives for innovation, thathave not been formally addressed in research.

3 WWW blocking factors

Among the many impediments to successful WWWcollaboration are issues of cognitive overload, lack ofawareness of others’ activities, lack of context aboutthe purpose and history of shared objects, lack of appro-priate feedback and acknowledgement of contributionsto the shared space, disorientation, unbalanced partici-pation, and problems with bringing new team membersinto a complex and established collaborative space.Some issues that warrant further research are dis-cussed next.

3.1 Social-technical gap

Claims that collaborative systems are able to simulatethe face-to-face collaborative environment besidesmaximising user value by combining real time, interac-tive and multimedia capabilities are now challenged.Emerging collaborative technologies are pragmaticallyor logically incapable of replicating characteristics offace-to-face human interactions, particularly the space-time contexts in which such interactions take place.These include providing: rapid feedback, multiple chan-nels, personal information, nuanced information, sharedlocal contexts, informal “hall” time before and after, co-

reference, individual control, implicit cues and spatialityof reference (Olson & Olson, 2000: 149).

Ackerman (2000) further argues that there is an inher-ent gap between the social requirements of computersupported cooperative work (CSCW) and its technicalmechanisms. The intellectual challenge is to explore,understand and resolve this fundamental mismatch be-tween what is required socially and what we can dotechnically.

3.2 Usable interfaces

Evidently, it is still too hard for people to work togetherthrough their computers because of the artificial con-straints of technology, inadequate interface design, andthe poor integration of conventional software withgroupware. There is a need to make the computer an af-fordance for working together (Greenberg, 1998).

Testing groupware is also extremely difficult. It de-mands more than traditional usability studies. Severalevaluators are required to observe each subject, and in-teractions with other subjects. Field studies on group-ware deployment are therefore difficult to research. Tofurther confound the problem there are no agreed uponmeasurement metrics for deciding upon the success orfailure of groupware (Gutwin & Greenberg, 1999). Mea-suring the end product often shows little difference be-cause people are resilient at working together througheven the most limited groupware.

Usability is also an important issue within global soft-ware development, especially in adapting softwarefrom an international or foreign culture to a local culture(Yeo, 2001). The issue of inter-operability standard forcollaborative interfaces is yet to be resolved. Compa-nies have accumulated layers and layers of IT systems,many of which are unable to talk to each other (TheEconomist, 31 January 2002).

3.3 Culture of trust

In an in-depth longitudinal study of groupware use in aglobal professional services organization, Kelly & Jones(2001) claimed that managers must pay more attentionto the development and maintenance of the social infra-structure underlying communication as they do thetechnological infrastructure. Providing a shared lan-guage to overcome problems of interpretation, andbuilding a secure and trustful environment can help toalleviate feelings of vulnerability to the critical scrutiny ofothers.

Workspace awareness brings another dimension to un-derstanding collaborative interactions. It helps peoplemove between individual and shared activities, providesa context in which to interpret other’s utterances, al-lows anticipation of others’ actions, and reduces the ef-fort needed to coordinate tasks and resources (Gutwin& Greenberg, 1999). Thus electronic virtual workspacesmust emulate the affordances of physical workspaces,if they are to support a group’s natural way of workingtogether, such as knowing where others are looking, re-




lating body gestures to items in a workspace, glancingaround for awareness, and so forth.

Given these concerns, the implementation of WWW re-quires a bold vision and commitment. Malaysia’s Multi-media Super Corridor (MSC) project is an attempt tomaterialise WWW.

4 Implementing WWW in the MSC

The World Competitiveness Index 2000 (The Econo-mist, April 22, 2000: 102) ranked Malaysia as fourthamong non-OECD countries in terms of internationalcompetitiveness (after Singapore, Hong Kong and Tai-wan). To remain competitive, Malaysia has developedtwo strategies. First, to become a leader in the regionby creating value from IT businesses, and second, to ac-quire global status by creating a “multimedia utopia” forworld class technology-led companies that desire touse Malaysia as a regional hub. The concept of ‘Multi-media Super Corridor’ implies the collaboration of com-panies in a 50-by-15 kilometre area using state-of-the-art multimedia and telecommunication technologies.The MSC Project is designed to help actualise Malay-sia’s Vision 2020, the development into a fully devel-oped nation likewise other industrialised countries bythe year 2020 (Khalid, 2000b). It has attracted large in-vestments, and to date the MSC status has beenawarded to 648 local and international companies aswell as research institutions (MSC Partners, 18 March2002).

4.1 Flagship applications

There are seven flagship applications in the MSC: SmartSchools, Electronic Government, Telemedicine, Multi-purpose Card, Worldwide Manufacturing Web, R&DClusters, and Borderless Marketing Centres. WhileWWW is evident within all applications, the WorldwideManufacturing Web (WMW) is set to showcase whatWWW means. The goal is to position Malaysia as aprime choice for manufacturing companies, which canlocate manufacturing operations in the region more ef-ficiently and cost-effectively. The WMW encouragescompanies to build links between their national and re-gional operational centres around a wide range of sup-port services: Research and Development, Design, En-gineering, Manufacturing Control, Procurement, andLogistics and Distribution Support. This eventually cre-ates a “web” of manufacturing-related operations thatreach far beyond Malaysia and the Southeast Asian re-gion (MSC Worldwide Manufacturing Web, 2002).

4.2 MSC technology enablers

The technology enablers within MSC include:

• Physical infrastructure, comprising 2.5-10 gigabitsfibre-optic backbone to support virtual boardrooms,remote CAD/CAM operations, and live multimediaInternet broadcasting.

• High capacity links to international centres toensure that information, products, and services

flow freely and quickly between MSC companies,their overseas partners, and export markets.

• Open standards, high-speed switching and multipleprotocols including ATM for the development andimplementation of multimedia applications.

• Supporting legislation, policies and practices, suchas cyberlaws and bills of guarantee, to encourageglobal collaboration.

• Availability of about 25,000 skilled knowledge work-ers with multimedia education by the year 2005.

The MSC is arguably the boldest, grandest and mostambitious scheme the world has seen, using ICT as ameans for transforming a society from a developingthird-world economy into a fully developed nation (Har-ris, 1998). To what extent Malaysia has succeeded inimplementing WWW, remains unclear. Besides themassive input into education in order to generateknowledge workers for the MSC, the social, behaviouraland managerial aspects ICT diffusion and adoption, or-ganizational learning and transformation, knowledgedissemination and institutional support receive scant at-tention. The International Telecommunications Unionranks Malaysia as 28th among 39 nations in terms of‘multimedia readiness’ (Harris, 1998). Besides technol-ogy readiness, Figure 2 presents a framework of theHuman Factors issues in WWW as addressed in theVCODE project (Khalid, 2000a).

4.3 Virtual collaboration in product design

(VCODE)

The overall objective of the VCODE project (http://www.unimas.my/idea/vcode) is to comprehensively ex-plore issues in the design, implementation and usage ofmulti-participant collaborative systems, as shown in Fig-ure 1.

The project aims and milestones include: • to document strategies for virtual collaboration on

the Web, and to suggest a viable methodology forWeb-based collaborative engineering;

• to identify individual differences among membersof a collaborative engineering team that mayimpede collaboration and communication;

Figure 1: Collaborative engineering with VCODE




• to develop a virtual environment for supporting con-ceptual product design; and

• to specify a methodology for usability evaluation ofcollaborative interfaces. The VCODE system is ademonstrator system for virtual collaboration inconceptual product design. The system facilitates

Web-based collaborative engineering by presentingproduct information in a virtual environment andutilising several media (graphics, animation, video,text, sound and shared whiteboard) to createshared environments. The usability of the VCODEsystems is reported in Khalid (2001).

5 The future of WWW

WWW is real and here to stay. IT companies such asSun Microsystems may be the model for large high-tech companies worldwide in moulding the workplaceto information-age realities. Sun believes where people

work should reflect that change; taking initiatives fromthe development of “drop-in” centres where employ-ees go to work that are closer to home and more easilyaccessible, to creating elaborate work-at-home pro-gram, plus providing extensive equipment and othersupport to realise it (Fox, 2001).

Figure 2: Framework for collaborative engineering in world wide work




Today, home area networks are penetrating domesticlife. This home telemetry gateway, if successfully en-abled, makes it possible to perform domestic and worktasks via the Internet (Dutta-Roy, 1999). In future, thepotentials of the Web and mobile communication tech-nologies will be greatly exploited to realise virtual work.

So what promises might technology hold for WWW? Ifthe computing environment, claims Van Dam (2001:50),would simply carry out wishes via a form of telepathy –corgito ergo fac (“I think therefore do it”), then many ofthe promises of the 21st century technology may be de-livered to support WWW. However, it is not the techno-logical artifacts alone that matter, but the ways wechoose to use them that will determine the future ofwork.

6 References

Anderhl, R., Bumiller, J., Krastel, M. and Schiemenz, K. (1998),Methods to support co-operative product development, Pro-ceedings of the 10th International Conference PROLAMAT,Trento, Italy.

Bichler, D. (2000), Global engineering networks – product de-sign in global teamwork structures, Proceedings of Profes-sional Congress ‘The Future of Work’, World Engineers’ Con-vention, 19-21 June, VDI Verlag, Dusseldorf, 89-103.

Bond, A.H. and Ricci, R.J. (1992), Cooperation in aircraft de-sign, Research in Engineering Design, 4, 115-130.

Clark, H.H. and Brennan, S.E. (1991). Grounding in communi-cation. In L. Resnick, J.M. Levine and S.D. Teasley (eds.), Per-spectives on Socially Shared Cognition (Washington DC:APA),127-149.

Christiaanse, E. and Kumar, K. (2000), ICT-enabled coordina-tion of dynamic supply webs, International Journal of PhysicalDistribution and Logistics Management, 30 (3/4).

Crabtree, R.A., Fox, M.S. and Baid, N.K. (1997), Case studiesof coordination activities and problems in collaborative design,Research in Engineering Design, 9, 70-84.

DeSanctis, G., Wright, M., and Jiang, L. (2001), Building a glo-bal learning community, Communications of the ACM, 44(12),80-82.

Deus, L. (2000), Collaboration marketplace evolving to meetemerging needs, http://www.mitre.org/pubs/edge_perspectives/february_00/ep_first.htm.

Dutta-Roy, A. (1999), Networks for homes, IEEE Spectrum,December, 26-33.

Fox, R. (2001), The future of the tech workplace, Communica-tions of the ACM, 44 (3), 9.

Greenberg, S. (1998), Collaborative interfaces for the Web. InC. Forsythe, E. Grose and J. Ratner (eds.) Human Factors andWeb Development, (Mahwah, N.J.: LEA Press), 241-254.

Gutwin, C. and Greeberg, S. (1999), The effects of workspaceawareness support on the usability of real-time distributedgroupware, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interac-tion, 6 (3), 243-281.

Harris, R. (1998), Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor, AnIFIP WG 9.4 position paper presented at the Business Meet-ing, 19 February, Bangkok.

Kelly, S., and Jones, M. (2001), Groupware and the social in-frastructure of communication, Communications of the ACM,44 (12), 77-79.

Kersten. G. and Noronha, S. (1999), Negotiation via the WorldWide Web: a cross-cultural study of decision making, GroupDecision and Negotiation, 8, 251-279.

Khalid, H. M (2000a), Human factors in virtual collaboration ofproduct design, In Lim, K.Y. (ed.) Proceedings of APCHI/ASEAN Ergonomics 2000 (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science), 25-38.

Khalid, H.M. (2000b), Human factors of IT-based solutions forworldwide manufacturing web, Human Factors and Ergonom-ics in Manufacturing, 10, 99-113.

Khalid, H.M. (2001), Toward affective collaborative design, InSmith, M.J., Salvendy, G., Harris, D. and Koubek, R.J. (eds.)Usability Evaluation and Interface Design, Vol. 1, Proceedingsof HCI International 2001 (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum),370-374.

Kini, A. and Sasikumar, M. (2001), The supply chain impact oftechnology-enabled mass customization, Proceedings of the2001 World Congress on Mass Customization and Personal-ization (Hong Kong: HKUST), 1-9 (CD-ROM).

Laing, A., Duffy, F., Jaunzens, D., and Willis, S. (1998), NewEnvironments for Working (London: DEGW), 126-135.

Lea, R., Honda, Y., and Matsuda, K. (1997), Virtual society: col-laboration in 3D spaces on the Internet, computer supportedcooperative work, Journal of Collaborative Computing, 6, 227-250.

Luczak, H., Stahl, J., Schlick, C., Depolt, J. and Springer, J.(1997), “Tele”-cooperation for locally distributed product de-velopment, in Khalid, H.M. (ed.), Proceedings of ASEAN Ergo-nomics 1997 (Kuala Lumpur: IEA Press), 67-74.

MSC Partners (2002), http://www.mdc.com.my/partner/in-dex.html.

MSC Worldwide Manufacturing Web (2002), http://www.mdc.com.my/flagship/manufact/index.html.

Olson, G.M and Olson, J.S. (2000), Distance matters, Human-Computer Interaction, 15, 139-178.

Qureshi, S. and Zigurs, I. (2001), Paradoxes and prerogativesin global virtual collaboration, Communications of the ACM, 44(12), 85-88.

Tseng, M.M. (2000), Design by customers – expanding theglobal manufacturing enterprise by including the customers,Proceedings of the World Engineers’ Convention on ‘The Fu-ture of Work’ (Dusseldorf: VDI Verlag), 47-56.

Van Dam, A. (2001), User interfaces: disappearing, dissolving,and evolving, Communications of the ACM, 44 (3), 50-52.

VDI (2000), “The future of work”, in the Memorandum on theWorld Engineers’ Convention 2000, UNESCO World Engi-neering and Technology Report No. 1, 26-27.

Willaert, S.S.A., de Graaf, R., and Minderhoud, S. (1998), Col-laborative engineering: a case study of concurrent engineeringin a wider context, Journal of Engineering and TechnologyManagement, 15, 87-109.

Yeo, A. (2001), Global-software development lifecycle: an ex-ploratory study, Proceedings of CHI, 3, 104-111.

Quality of Working Life and Health in a Networked Society


14 Pascale CARAYON


Pascale CARAYONDepartment of Industrial Engineering and Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement, University of Wisconsin-Mad-ison, 610 Walnut Street, Madison WI 53705, USA, E-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we examine the effects of ubiquitous, continuous computing on different parts and stages oflife. We discuss the cumulative, longitudinal impact of ubiquitous, continuous computing on quality of work-ing life and health. Various facets of quality of working life and health are discussed: workstation ergonomics,interfaces and usability, psychosocial work factors, and management of technological change.

Information technology (IT) has become pervasive. It ispart of many different parts of our life: at work, at home,in leisure activities, to communicate with our family andfriends, to make an appointment with our physician,etc… IT has also become part of many different stagesof life. Kids at school learn about mathematics using var-ious computer softwares. Students use email to com-municate with their teachers. Workers of all ages and inall kinds of profession use various forms of IT to per-form their job. Senior citizens enter their health informa-tion into a computerized database that gets transmittedto their doctors in advance of their appointment. IT hasbecome ubiquitous and continuous. IT is present in dif-ferent parts of our life and in different stages of life.The ubiquity and continuity of IT can have some majorimpact on our quality of (working) life and health. In thispaper, we argue that the WWDU community needs tolook at how ubiquitous and continuous IT can havesome cumulative, longitudinal impact on quality of(working) life and health.

1 Quality of working life and health

Much research has been conducted that identified ITfactors or IT-related work environment factors that con-tribute to positive or negative quality of working life, andthat affect physical and mental health (Carayon and Lim1994; Smith and Carayon 1995; Bradley 2000):• workstation ergonomics• interfaces and usability• psychosocial work factors• management of technological changeThe positive and/or negative impact of IT on quality ofworking life and health depend on the design of thetechnology (e.g., poor computer interface design can in-crease ergonomic and cognitive loads), and the fit (orlack of fit) between the technology and the work and or-ganizational systems (Smith and Carayon-Sainfort 1989;Carayon and Smith 2000; Eason 2001).

2 Ubiquitous and continuous IT

IT has become pervasive because it is present in manydifferent parts of our life (work, home, school, leisure,etc. …). A recent special issue of the International Jour-nal of Human-Computer Interaction was entitled “Ubiq-uitous computing: Anytime, anyplace, anywhere?”(Stanton 2001). According to the concept of ubiquitous

computing, computers, microprocessors and otherforms of IT are present in all different parts of our life.Whether computing will really become ubiquitous is upto debate, but many IT experts have developed such avision (see, for example, the 2001 book by Dertouzous,director of the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT(Dertouzos 2001)).

From a human factors and ergonomics point of view, itis important to identify the cumulative impact of ubiqui-tous computing on quality of working life and health. Forinstance, what is the cumulative impact of long hours ofcomputer use on musculoskeletal health when oneuses a computer at the office to perform certain workactivities, at home to do the shopping and the personalfinancial business, and during leisure times? How easyor difficult is it to adapt to different softwares and inter-faces when different forms of IT are used in differentparts of one’s life and how does this affect learning, sat-isfaction and motivation?

In addition to becoming ubiquitous, IT is also becomingcontinuous. IT is pervasive in different stages of our life:

• kids at school and at home. More and more com-puters are being implemented in schools. And thenumber of households with computers is increas-ing steadily.

• students in colleges, universities or higher-educa-tion institutions. For example, the use of distancelearning, web-mediated education and email asmeans of communication has increased.

• use of computers at work. IT is present in all formsof work.

• use of computers outside of work.• use of computers by elderly. For instance, comput-

ers have ‘invaded’ senior centers where elderly canconnect to Internet to communicate with theirfriends and family. When elderly patients visit withtheir doctor for their medical evaluation, the doctoruses a computer to update their medical record andto get the results of their lab tests.

From a human factors and ergonomics point of view, itis important to understand the longitudinal impact of ITover the different stages of life. How does the continu-ous use of IT over a long period of time affect one’shealth? How do computer-related skills developed atone stage of life can be transferred to another stage oflife?



Pascale CARAYON 15

3 Cumulative and longitudinal impact of IT

Because IT is becoming ubiquitous and continuous, weneed to understand the cumulative and longitudinal im-pact of IT on quality of (working) life and health. In thispaper, ubiquitous computing is described as having acumulative impact, i.e. the accumulation of computeruse in different parts of one’s life. Continuous comput-ing is described as having a longitudinal impact, i.e. animpact occurring over time and over different stages ofone’s life.

3.1 Workstation ergonomics

We have some knowledge of appropriate workstationergonomics for office settings and for adults. But weknow much less about ergonomics of computer work-stations in other settings, such as schools and colleges.When the use of computers is becoming more continu-ous over various stages of life, one could easily predicta strong negative longitudinal impact on musculoskele-tal health. However, insufficient data is available.

3.2 Interfaces and usability

More needs to be understood about interface designand usability for the various settings in which IT is usedand for the various populations that use IT. For instance,some research has explored the relationship betweenIT and aging (Charness 2001). But, more research isnecessary to understand the human factors of interfacedesign and usability by older users, but also by youngerusers. Shneiderman and Hochheiser (2001) have pro-posed the concept of ‘universal usability’ in order to bet-ter understand how various populations interact with IT.

3.3 Psychosocial work factors

A couple of years ago, one large car manufacturer de-cided to make computers available to its employees athome. One objective was for the company to more eas-ily communicate with its employees (via email). Thecompany was also hoping to reduce its training cost:employees could learn different skills via various soft-wares available from their computer at home. Howdoes this kind of company strategy affect the type, leveland nature of job-related training and learning? Howdoes that change the relationship between a companyand its employees? Does that improve communicationbetween the company and its employees? Or does thatincrease the distance between the managers and theemployees? Much research needs to be performed inorder to understand the ‘global’, cumulative psychoso-cial impact of IT (Bradley 2000). We know very littleabout the psychosocial transitions between differentphases of life with regard to IT use. For instance, howdo communication skills and abilities developed whenone was a kid in a highly computerized school get trans-ferred to a work setting when most communication isdone via other media?

3.4 Management of technological change

The process by which a technology is designed and im-plemented is very important in order to ensure highquality of working life and positive health. Technologicalchange processes that involve end-users are more likelyto produce satisfied and motivated end-users (Carayonand Karsh 2000). Further understanding of how technol-ogy gets implemented in different settings and at differ-ent stages of life is necessary. Eason (2001) argues forincreasing involvement of users in the design and im-plementation of IT. He believes that, if more tools andmethods are developed that users can use on theirown, we will achieve more efficient, effective changeprocesses.

4 Conclusion

The WWDU community should get increasingly in-volved in applications of IT in various parts of one’s life.For instance, Carroll (2001) argues for more involve-ment of HCI into ‘community computing’ or the sys-tems designed to “facilitate information, dissemination,discussion and joint activity pertaining to municipal gov-ernment, public schools, civic groups, local events,community issues and concerns, and regional econom-ic development and social services”. More WWDU re-search is being conducted in healthcare (see paperspresented at this conference). We should also get moreinvolved in understanding the longitudinal impact of ITover time and over different phases of one’s life. For in-stance, Robertson et al. (2000) have examined the ergo-nomics issues of computer use by college students.This paper has argued for a much larger, more encom-passing role of WWDU in the design and implementa-tion of various forms of IT in different parts and stagesof life.

5 Acknowledgements

Many of the references cited in this paper were pub-lished in the 20th Anniversary issue of Behaviour and In-formation Technology edited by Tom Stewart.

6 References

Bradley, G., Ed. (2000). Humans on the Net - Information &Communication Technology (ICT), Work Organization and Hu-man Beings. Stockholm, Sweden, Prevent.

Carayon, P. and B. Karsh (2000). "Sociotechnical issues in theimplementation of imaging technology." Behaviour and Infor-mation Technology 19(4): 247-262.

Carayon, P. and S.-Y. Lim (1994). Stress in automated offices.The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. A. Kent.New York, Marcel Dekker. vol. 53, supplement 16: 314-354.

Carayon, P. and M. J. Smith (2000). "Work organization and er-gonomics." Applied Ergonomics 31: 649-662.

Carroll, J. M. (2001). "Community computing as human-com-puter interaction." Behaviour and Information Technology20(5): 307-314.

Charness, N. (2001). Aging and communication: Human fac-tors issues. Communication, Technology and Aging. N. Char-



16 Pascale CARAYON

ness, D. C. Parks and B. A. Sabel. New York, NY, SpringerPublishing Company: 3-29.

Dertouzos, M. (2001). The Unfinished Revolution. New York,NY, HarperCollins.

Eason, K. (2001). "Changing perspectives on the organizationalconsequences of information technology." Behaviour and In-formation Technology 20(5): 323-328.

Robertson, M. M., B. I. Amick, et al. (2000). Using participatoryergonomics to develop a workshop on computer ergonomicsfor young knowledge workers. Systems, Social and Interna-tionalization Design Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction.M. J. Smith and G. Salvendy. Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates: 86-90.

Shneiderman, B. and H. Hochheiser (2001). "Universal usabili-ty as a stimulus to advanced interface design." Behaviour andInformation Technology 20(5): 367-376.

Smith, M. J. and P. Carayon (1995). "New technology, automa-tion, and work organization: Stress problems and improvedtechnology implementation strategies." The International Jour-nal of Human Factors in Manufacturing 5(1): 99-116.

Smith, M. J. and P. Carayon-Sainfort (1989). "A balance theoryof job design for stress reduction." International Journal of In-dustrial Ergonomics 4: 67-79.

Stanton, N. A. (2001). "Introduction: Ubiquitous computing:Anytime, anyplace, anywhere?" International Journal of Hu-man-Computer Interaction 13(2): 107-111.

Electronic Product Development (ePD) for Mass Customization


Martin HELANDER (1) and Jianxin Jiao (1) 17


Martin HELANDER (1) and Jianxin Jiao (1)(1) School of Mechanical and Production Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore639798, [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Electronic product development directly connects multiple customers and suppliers throughout the entirevalue chain. This alleviates much of the inefficiency in current product development and supply chain prac-tices. It integrates different facets of product design, process design, order processing, and order fulfilmentin a cohesive manner. This capability becomes a critical factor in global competition. The paper presents fun-damental issues and enabling techniques for applying the Internet to re-engineering manufacturing compa-nies towards mass customization.

1 Introduction

Facing the buyers’ market, many industries are nowshifting from mass production to mass customization

We approach mass customization from a product devel-opment perspective. Essentially, the strategy is to in-clude customers in the product development life cycleby proactively connecting customer needs to the capa-bilities of a company. One consideration is to elevatethe current practice of designing individual products todesigning product families. Another concern is to ex-tend the traditional boundaries of product design to en-compass a larger scope spanning from sales and mar-keting to distribution and services through the employ-ment of the Internet technology.

Usually information about customer needs may be de-livered by sales and marketing. The company may thenredesign products or decide to develop new ones. Thedesign effort has to take place with many experts in-volved: the supply chain companies may also participateif this is deemed necessary. A more complete versionof this paper with a full set of references is in Helanderand Jiao (2002, in press).

2 A systems model

Under the umbrella of ePD, individual customers canspecify their needs and make informed choices. Pro-viders can then directly conduct market research andestimate customer profiles. This will replace traditionalmarketing models. At the beginning, the concern isthe capability of manufacturers to make a product, thatis, production-orientation. Then the focus is on the ca-pability to sell products that have already been made,that is, sales-orientation. Later on, the theme is aboutcustomer preferences and how to accommodatethese preferences with respect to company capabili-ties, that is, marketing-orientation. The close-loop in-teraction between clients and providers on a one-to-one basis will increase the efficiency of matching buy-ing and selling. Such a one-to-one marketing tran-scends geographical and national boundaries. A sys-tems model is presented in Figure 1.

3 HCI in customizing products

There are two major challenges in designing an inter-face for mass customization: (a) An e-commerce envi-ronment that is easy and pleasurable to use; and (b)Mass customization environments where the customerwill understand his/her options for design and can easilyexpress them.The first issue, usability in e-commerce, has attractedmuch research, and many of the findings are summa-rized in Helander and Khalid (2001). In this research, weare more interested in the second issue: design of amass customization environment to enhance customerawareness of viable alternatives and help the customerto make good design decisions. This has not been pre-viously investigated in research.

In this study we are more concerned about the casualrather than the professional customer. This is becausethe motivation is much greater for professionals thanthat for casual consumers. The casual user has relative-ly little patience and will leave a web site that is not to-tally transparent. The purpose is to investigate variousprinciples for design of web-based products and identifyone or several interfaces, which will simplify web as-sembly. There are potential problems in designing or buildingproducts. One major problem is the limitations of thehuman information processing system including the

Figure 1: A systems model of ePD-enabled mass cus-tomization



18 Martin HELANDER (1) and Jianxin Jiao (1)

working memory. This makes it difficult to build or spec-ify products with more than 10 items. The purpose ofthis research is therefore to make options easy to un-derstand and easy to incorporate into mass customiza-tion design. There are several potential ways to performmass customization, including:• Selecting from a list of alternative items from one or

several menus;• Selecting items one-by-one either bottom-up or top-

down;• Assembling sequentially;• Building subassemblies first, which are then

assembled in turn; • Substituting items in a finished design; or• Putting together a puzzle of parts presented visu-

ally.The optimal strategy for mass customization dependson what object is being designed (i.e. Apparel, consum-er products, and computers). In this study, we first listvarious options for presentation of the items to be se-lected and assembled. Experiments are then performedin a laboratory setting to identify principles for presenta-tion and assembly that simplify the task. Test personsare recruited to participate in the experiments. Resultsare evaluated using ANOVA and other statistical meth-ods.

4 Customer Decision-Making Processes

The Internet provides direct on-line communication be-tween customers and manufacturers. Marketing re-search has shown that customers do not always knowexactly what they want, so instead of presenting choic-es one may help them to select and specify their prefer-ences.. Given that many possible combinations exist for‘custom-made’ products, an exhaustive presentationmay not be possible. In fact, too many choices couldconfuse the customers. In order to develop an effectiveinterface for customers to select and specify products,we need to understand how customers make decisions.In conventional shopping customers rely on sales per-sonnel to help with their product selection. In the sameway, manufacturers have relied on sales and marketingpeople to predict the preference of customers. With e-shopping, however, there is no middle-person becausecustomers communicate directly with the manufactur-er. This may be problematic. Similar situations occurwith catalog shopping. However, the problem withmass customization is worse because while the formeronly requires the customer to select from a limited list,the latter aims to provide what the customer wants. Apresentation of an exhaustive list may not be possibleand would, in fact, confuse customers. As a conse-quence, it is important to aid customer’s Decision-Mak-ing Process (DMP). This is the basis for developing aWeb-based ‘virtual sales agent’ as a user-friendly inter-face between customers and manufacturers. This ideais also endorsed by the MIT Media Lab. The followingsteps are employed for the systematic study of custom-er DMP:

• Extend the classical experiment(s) on customerDMP to the Internet shopping environment. Thepurpose is to bridge the gap between a prioriknowledge about DMP with traditional off-lineshopping and the unknown knowledge with on-lineshopping over the Internet;

• Study how DMP, customer satisfaction levels, andsearch effectiveness change as functions of search-ing methods (e.g., tree, keywords, visual inspec-tion), task complexity (e.g., number of choices pre-sented on screen), and customer variables (e.g.,accountability associated with the decision, timepressure);

• Establish a set of requirements for developingeffective ‘virtual sales agents’ in Web-based shop-ping environment; and

• Develop one or several cognitive model of cus-tomer decision behavior. Some models have a theo-retical basis in decision making research, such asExpected Utility Theory, Prospect Theory, Multi-Attribute Value Models, Lens Model, PreferenceTrees, Elimination by Aspect, Framing, and RegretTheories.

5 Product Platform and Electronic Catalog

Through ePD, designers are able to search from internalsupplier catalogs. However, keeping those catalogs ac-curate and up-to-date is another task altogether. In addi-tion, contract management is important in that it pro-vides capabilities to enable each buying organization toaccess a virtual private catalog that can be customizedfor the individual desktop. An efficient e-catalog withcomprehensive procure-to-pay capabilities and contentmaintenance is definitely conducive to the ePD front-end. In many ways, catalog design resembles the de-sign of product platforms.Research on product platforms has traditionally beenthe province of market research and strategic manage-ment. These efforts focus mostly on buyer segmenta-tion, customer recognition, product positioning, and soon. In the context of mass customization, it is importantto design product platforms so that they may proactive-ly connect customer needs to the capabilities of a com-pany. In other words, product platform design shouldresult from an optimal balance between customer rec-ognition and capability assessment in both design andmanufacturing.In view of combining both business and engineeringperspectives in product platform planning, it is possibleto develop a sophisticated redesign procedure builtaround market research, conjoint analysis, and productline simulation. Here we outline a five-step procedure: • Survey customer usage and attitudes toward prod-

uct offerings; • Collect importance ratings of product attributes

based on AHP and QFD; • Conduct a conjoint analysis to determine consumer

preferences for various product features;



Martin HELANDER (1) and Jianxin Jiao (1) 19

• Assess the information content of design withrespect to various product features based on theaxiomatic design theory - and

• Prepare various product platforms and predict theirfuture market shares from conjoint analyses. At thesame time the adequacy of the manufacturingcapabilities may be predicted.

This procedure allows for maximum customer input intothe redesign process combined with the assessment ofcompany’s capabilities. In addition, it offers product plat-form managers an opportunity to test products prior tothe manufacturing processes, as well as guidelines fordeveloping mass customization strategies.

6 Product family modeling over the internet

Product families have been recognized as an effectivemeans to support mass customization. They provideproduct differentiation while keeping an economy ofscale. The modeling of product families is the backboneof epd endeavor. Research in the area of product struc-ture is mainly presented in terms of product modeling,which typically tackles detailed data related to an indi-vidual product. In industry, product structures and asso-ciated coding systems usually are specific to particularproduct families. There rarely exists a company-wideproduct data model across different product families.

This research applies graph grammar formalisms to themodeling of product families. Graph grammars excel indescribing both structural and non-structural informa-tion and in dealing with the transformation and genera-tion of elements of the modeled system. Its advantageshave been proven in many applications. The followingmethodology is adopted:

• Investigate basic elements and organization ofproduct families as a structured system to create avariety of products with shared core product tech-nologies. It involves not only the shared base prod-uct, but also customization modules, standarddesigns, and primary patterns of variety to generatecustom designs;

• Specify the design space of the product familybased on Programmed Attributed Graph Gram-mars;

• Deal with configuration constraints by definingapplication conditions for production rules;

• Construct control diagrams to capture complex rela-tionships among modules and use them to controlthe application sequence of production rules; and

• Model the process of customizing the base productthrough manipulating particular modules by rewrit-ing the starting graph using a series of productionsaccording to the control diagram.

These formalisms can lead to a methodology for proto-type testing of product family modeling over the Inter-net. Acknowledging the fact that existing softwarepackages are sophisticated, an indirect approach to theintegration of product model data to the WWW is adopt-

ed. The system is based on XML for defining a productfamily’s syntactic model and incorporates a centralizeddatabase for associating technological information. Thisallows a product development team to define productsat both the part and family levels completely. A transla-tor is introduced to take the native file format of conven-tional modeling package PROGRESS and convert it intoa corresponding XML based model. This model canthen be fused into an existing product data repository bylinking mechanisms developed in the system. Thetranslator resides on a main central server and can beaccessed remotely by a designer. This strategy takesadvantage of the interoperatabiliy and seamless exten-sibility of the information infrastructure of the WWW.

7 Summary

It has been envisioned that e-commerce and mass cus-tomization will emerge as a primary style of manufactur-ing in the coming decade and beyond. The integration ofdesign, manufacturing, and logistics over the Internetwill be the trend for the Factory of the Future (FOF). Theimplementation of electronic product development(ePD) for mass customization will enhance profitabilitythrough a synergy of increasing customer-perceived val-ue while reducing the costs of design, production anddistribution. Companies successfully adapting to thisnew style of manufacturing will be able to reduce reli-ance on the traditional marketing channels, to gain moremarket shares globally, and to achieve high-efficiencyproduct development. This technology can enhance theestablished strengths of industries in global manufac-turing. Particular considerations of ePD proposed in this pro-gram involves these aspects: (a) Synergy of e-commerce and mass customizationthrough integrated product development; (b) Holistic perspective on the entire product value chainencompassing customers, designers, suppliers, manu-facturers, and logistics providers; (c) Emphasis on the re-engineering of domain-specificworkflows and business models underlying convention-al e-commerce infrastructures; (d) Focus on the fundamental research issues surround-ing ePD-enabled mass customization such as human-computer interaction, product platforms, and collabora-tion modeling and support; (e) Targeting high value-added business processes bysynchronizing product differentiation and the economyof scale; and (f) Industry-orientation by incorporating current fashionson e-business and e-marketing with product develop-ment and supply chain practices.

8 References

Helander, M.G. and Jiao Jianxin, (2001), E-product develop-ment (epd) for mass customization. Technovation - Interna-tional Journal of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship, inpress.



20 Martin HELANDER (1) and Jianxin Jiao (1)

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