Mirrors of the World - Supporting Situational Awareness with Computer Screens

In this paper we develop a notion of support for social and situational awareness. Our initial ideas are based on the metaphor of using a mirror to see what you are not looking at. We provide two studies that, for different contexts, apply the metaphor to develop design ideas that fit the context of use

THE PREVALENCE OF WORK-RELATED MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDER AMONG OCCUPATIONAL TAXICABS DRIVERS IN NIGERIA

This work investigates the opinion of operators of Taxicabs in Nigerian on some ergonomic factors influencing their safety, comfort and performance while driving. Participatory ergonomic intervention approach (PEIA) and workspace analysis were used in the evaluation of ergonomic suitability of driver-vehicle system. 1406 drivers were sampled randomly in the study area and a minimum responds rate of 92% was achieved. Significant prevalence of WRMD reported among respondents on the four body segments are located at the neck(67%), right and left wrists(18%, 20%), upper, middle and lower back (29%, 29%, 30%), and buttock (19%) of the operators. The potentials of carrying out ergonomic investigation on taxicab operators through direct involvement of major stakeholders in the transportation business has been demonstrated and found very useful in the development of user friendly vehicle for Taxicab operator in Nigeria

Ergonomic assessment of taxicabs using participatory ergonomic intervention approach among Southwestern Nigerian drivers

This work investigates the opinion of operators of taxicabs in Nigeria on some ergonomic factors influencing their safety, comfort and performance while driving. Participatory ergonomic intervention approach(PEIA) and work area analysis were used in the evaluation of ergonomicsuitability of driver-vehicle system. 1,406 drivers were sampled randomly in the study area and a minimum responds rate of 92% was achieved. Significant among the WRMD observed at the three body segments are discomforts at the right and left wrists, upper, middle and lower back, buttock and neck of the operators. The potentials of carrying out ergonomic investigation on taxicab operators through direct involvement of major stakeholders in the transportation business has been demonstrated and found very necessary in the development of user friendly vehicle for taxicab operator in Nigeria

Computer aided ergonomics and workspace design

Computer aided ergonomics and workspace desig

Grid tool integration within the eMinerals Project

In this article we describe the eMinerals mini grid, which is now running in production mode. Thisis an integration of both compute and data components, the former build upon Condor, PBS and thefunctionality of Globus v2, and the latter being based on the combined use of the Storage ResourceBroker and the CCLRC data portal. We describe how we have integrated the middleware components,and the different facilities provided to the users for submitting jobs within such an environment. We willalso describe additional functionality we found it necessary to provide ourselves

Community mirrors for supporting corporate innovation and motivation

In this paper we are exploring the idea of applying community support concepts and ubiquitous user interfaces to supporting the motivation to innovate in corporate settings. Our special focus is on the early phase of the innovation process – the phase of idea generation and suggestion management. The key idea is to provide awareness for a company’s creative potential and appreciation for the idea creators in a corporate setting by displaying information from community platforms handling the suggestion management process on public shared displays (“Idea Mirrors”) in the office space

Remote real-time collaboration through synchronous exchange of digitised human-workpiece interactions

In this highly globalised manufacturing ecosystem, product design and verification activities, production and inspection processes, and technical support services are spread across global supply chains and customer networks. Therefore, collaborative infrastructures that enable global teams to collaborate with each other in real-time in performing complex manufacturing-related tasks is highly desirable. This work demonstrates the design and implementation of a remote real-time collaboration platform by using human motion capture technology powered by infrared light based depth imaging sensors and a synchronous data transfer protocol from computer networks. The unique functionality of the proposed platform is the sharing of physical contexts during a collaboration session by not only exchanging human actions but also the effects of those actions on the workpieces and the task environment. Results show that this platform could enable teams to remotely work on a common engineering problem at the same time and also get immediate feedback from each other making it valuable for collaborative design, inspection and verifications tasks in the factories of the future. An additional benefit of the implemented platform is its use of low cost off the shelf equipment thereby making it accessible to SMEs that are connected to larger organisations via complex supply chains

Designing to Support Workspace Awareness in Remote Collaboration using 2D Interactive Surfaces

Increasing distributions of the global workforce are leading to collaborative workamong remote coworkers. The emergence of such remote collaborations is essentiallysupported by technology advancements of screen-based devices ranging from tabletor laptop to large displays. However, these devices, especially personal and mobilecomputers, still suffer from certain limitations caused by their form factors, that hinder supporting workspace awareness through non-verbal communication suchas bodily gestures or gaze. This thesis thus aims to design novel interfaces andinteraction techniques to improve remote coworkers’ workspace awareness throughsuch non-verbal cues using 2D interactive surfaces.The thesis starts off by exploring how visual cues support workspace awareness infacilitated brainstorming of hybrid teams of co-located and remote coworkers. Basedon insights from this exploration, the thesis introduces three interfaces for mobiledevices that help users maintain and convey their workspace awareness with their coworkers. The first interface is a virtual environment that allows a remote person to effectively maintain his/her awareness of his/her co-located collaborators’ activities while interacting with the shared workspace. To help a person better express his/her hand gestures in remote collaboration using a mobile device, the second interfacepresents a lightweight add-on for capturing hand images on and above the device’sscreen; and overlaying them on collaborators’ device to improve their workspace awareness. The third interface strategically leverages the entire screen space of aconventional laptop to better convey a remote person’s gaze to his/her co-locatedcollaborators. Building on the top of these three interfaces, the thesis envisions an interface that supports a person using a mobile device to effectively collaborate with remote coworkers working with a large display.Together, these interfaces demonstrate the possibilities to innovate on commodity devices to offer richer non-verbal communication and better support workspace awareness in remote collaboration