Design Principles of Mobile Information Systems in the Digital Transformation of the Workplace - Utilization of Smartwatch-based Information Systems in the Corporate Context

During the last decades, smartwatches emerged as an innovative and promising technology and hit the consumer market due to the accessibility of affordable devices and predominant acceptance caused by the considerable similarity to common wristwatches. With the unique characteristics of permanent availability, unobtrusiveness, and hands-free operation, they can provide additional value in the corporate context. Thus, this thesis analyzes use cases for smartwatches in companies, elaborates on the design of smartwatch-based information systems, and covers the usability of smartwatch applications during the development of smartwatch-based information systems. It is composed of three research complexes. The first research complex focuses on the digital assistance of (mobile) employees who have to execute manual work and have been excluded so far from the benefits of the digitalization since they cannot operate hand-held devices. The objective is to design smartwatch-based information systems to support workflows in the corporate context, facilitate the daily work of numerous employees, and make processes more efficient for companies. During a design science research approach, smartwatch-based software artifacts are designed and evaluated in use cases of production, support, security service, as well as logistics, and a nascent design theory is proposed to complement theory according to mobile information system research. The evaluation shows that, on the one hand, smartwatches have enormous potential to assist employees with a fast and ubiquitous exchange of information, instant notifications, collaboration, and workflow guidance while they can be operated incidentally during manual work. On the other hand, the design of smartwatch-based information systems is a crucial factor for successful long-term deployment in companies, and especially limitations according to the small form-factor, general conditions, acceptance of the employees, and legal regulations have to be addressed appropriately. The second research complex addresses smartwatch-based information systems at the office workplace. This broadens and complements the view on the utilization of smartwatches in the corporate context in addition to the mobile context described in the first research complex. Though smartwatches are devices constructed for mobile use, the utilization in low mobile or stationary scenarios also has benefits due they exhibit the characteristic of a wearable computer and are directly connected to the employee’s body. Various sensors can perceive employee-, environment- and therefore context-related information and demand the employees’ attention with proactive notifications that are accompanied by a vibration. Thus, a smartwatch-based and gamified information system for health promotion at the office workplace is designed and evaluated. Research complex three provides a closer look at the topic of usability concerning applications running on smartwatches since it is a crucial factor during the development cycle. As a supporting element for the studies within the first and second research complex, a framework for the usability analysis of smartwatch applications is developed. For research, this thesis contributes a systemization of the state-of-the-art of smartwatch utilization in the corporate context, enabling and inhibiting influence factors of the smartwatch adoption in companies, and design principles as well as a nascent design theory for smartwatch-based information systems to support mobile employees executing manual work. For practice, this thesis contributes possible use cases for smartwatches in companies, assistance in decision-making for the introduction of smartwatch-based information systems in the corporate context with the Smartwatch Applicability Framework, situated implementations of a smartwatch-based information system for typical use cases, design recommendations for smartwatch-based information systems, an implementation of a smartwatch-based information system for the support of mobile employees executing manual work, and a usability-framework for smartwatches to automatically access usability of existing applications providing suggestions for usability improvement

Une approche à base de modèles synergiques pour la prise en compte simultanée de l'utilisabilité, la fiabilité et l'opérabilité des systèmes interactifs critiques

Dans le cadre de la conception et du développement de systèmes interactifs critiques, lorsque le coût d'une erreur potentielle d'utilisation ou d'un dysfonctionnement du système peut dépasser le coût de développement de ce système ou se chiffrer en pertes humaines, les techniques, méthodes et processus actuellement proposés dans le domaine de l'IHM sont difficilement exploitables. D'une part, ils ne permettent pas de garantir simultanément les propriétés d'utilisabilité et de sûreté du système développé. D'autre part, la formation et la qualification des utilisateurs du système avant sa mise en opération n'est pas envisagée. Enfin, ces techniques, méthodes et processus ne fournissent pas les moyens de traçabilité exigés pour le développement de systèmes critiques. L'argumentaire de cette thèse s'appuie sur les avantages et limitations des approches existantes en termes de processus et notations de modélisation. Nous proposons une approche et montrons sa réalisation à travers un processus de développement d'un système interactif critique et de son programme de formation associé. Ce processus fournit un cadre conceptuel, une association d'étapes, des notations, et un environnement logiciel pour : le développement d'un système utilisable et sûr, le développement du programme de formation associé ainsi que la traçabilité des exigences et des choix de conception tout au long des différentes étapes. Il utilise certains principes de la conception centrée utilisateur et exploite de manière synergique les modèles des tâches, les modèles formels du comportement du système et le modèle de développement du programme de formation.In the field of interactive critical systems, the cost of a usage error or of a system failure can overcome the cost of the development of the system itself, and can result in loss of life, injury or damage to the system and its environment. Then, currently available Human Computer Interaction techniques, methods and processes are not sufficient, as they are not handling all of the design and development issues that are associated to interactive critical systems. First of all, these techniques, methods and processes do not enable to guarantee that the system will fulfil both usability and reliability properties. Then, they do not consider training and qualification of the users of the system. At last, they do not provide means for traceability of the needs and requirements through the whole development process. We propose an approach to develop interactive critical systems that are usable, reliable and operable and we describe the associated conceptual framework of our approach. We propose an implementation of this approach with a development process, notations and a software environment. The development process integrates phases for the development of the associated training program, and it provides support for the traceability of requirements and design choices during the whole phases of the process. This approach takes advantages from the User Centered Design paradigm and uses, in a synergistic way, task models, system's behaviour formal models and training program development model

Understanding interaction mechanics in touchless target selection

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)We use gestures frequently in daily life—to interact with people, pets, or objects. But interacting with computers using mid-air gestures continues to challenge the design of touchless systems. Traditional approaches to touchless interaction focus on exploring gesture inputs and evaluating user interfaces. I shift the focus from gesture elicitation and interface evaluation to touchless interaction mechanics. I argue for a novel approach to generate design guidelines for touchless systems: to use fundamental interaction principles, instead of a reactive adaptation to the sensing technology. In five sets of experiments, I explore visual and pseudo-haptic feedback, motor intuitiveness, handedness, and perceptual Gestalt effects. Particularly, I study the interaction mechanics in touchless target selection. To that end, I introduce two novel interaction techniques: touchless circular menus that allow command selection using directional strokes and interface topographies that use pseudo-haptic feedback to guide steering–targeting tasks. Results illuminate different facets of touchless interaction mechanics. For example, motor-intuitive touchless interactions explain how our sensorimotor abilities inform touchless interface affordances: we often make a holistic oblique gesture instead of several orthogonal hand gestures while reaching toward a distant display. Following the Gestalt theory of visual perception, we found similarity between user interface (UI) components decreased user accuracy while good continuity made users faster. Other findings include hemispheric asymmetry affecting transfer of training between dominant and nondominant hands and pseudo-haptic feedback improving touchless accuracy. The results of this dissertation contribute design guidelines for future touchless systems. Practical applications of this work include the use of touchless interaction techniques in various domains, such as entertainment, consumer appliances, surgery, patient-centric health settings, smart cities, interactive visualization, and collaboration

A multi-modelS based approach for the modelling and the analysis of usable and resilient partly autonomous interactive systems

La croissance prévisionnelle du trafic aérien est telle que les moyens de gestion actuels doivent évoluer et être améliorés et l'automatisation de certains aspects de cette gestion semble être un moyen pour gérer cet accroissement du trafic tout en gardant comme invariant un niveau de sécurité constant. Toutefois, cette augmentation du trafic pourrait entraîner un accroissement de la variabilité de la performance de l'ensemble des moyens de gestion du trafic aérien, en particulier dans le cas de dégradation de cette automatisation. Les systèmes de gestion du trafic aérien sont considérés comme complexes car ils impliquent de nombreuses interactions entre humains et systèmes, et peuvent être profondément influencés par les aspects environnementaux (météorologie, organisation, stress ...) et tombent, de fait, dans la catégorie des Systèmes Sociotechniques (STS) (Emery & Trist, 1960). A cause de leur complexité, les interactions entre les différents éléments (humains, systèmes et organisations) de ces STS peuvent être linéaires et partiellement non linéaires, ce qui rend l'évolution de leur performance difficilement prévisible. Au sein de ces STS, les systèmes interactifs doivent être utilisables, i.e. permettre à leurs utilisateurs d'accomplir leurs tâches de manière efficace et efficiente. Un STS doit aussi être résilient aux perturbations telles que les défaillances logicielles et matérielles, les potentielles dégradations de l'automatisation ou les problèmes d'interaction entre les systèmes et leurs opérateurs. Ces problèmes peuvent affecter plusieurs aspects des systèmes sociotechniques comme les ressources, le temps d'exécution d'une tâche, la capacité à d'adaptation à l'environnement... Afin de pouvoir analyser l'impact de ces perturbations et d'évaluer la variabilité de la performance d'un STS, des techniques et méthodes dédiées sont requises. Elles doivent fournir un support à la modélisation et à l'analyse systématique de l'utilisabilité et de la résilience de systèmes interactifs aux comportements partiellement autonomes. Elles doivent aussi permettre de décrire et de structurer un grand nombre d'informations, ainsi que de traiter la variabilité de chaque élément du STS et la variabilité liée à leurs interrelations. Les techniques et méthodes existantes ne permettent actuellement ni de modéliser un STS dans son ensemble, ni d'en analyser les propriétés d'utilisabilité et de résilience (ou alors se focalisent sur un sous-ensemble du STS perdant, de fait, la vision systémique). Enfin, elles ne fournissent pas les moyens d'analyser la migration de tâches suite à l'introduction d'une nouvelle technologie ou d'analyser la variabilité de la performance en cas de dégradation de fonctions récemment automatisées. Ces arguments sont développés dans la thèse et appuyés par une analyse détaillée des techniques de modélisation existantes et des méthodes qui leurs sont associées. La contribution présentée est basée sur l'identification d'un ensemble d'exigences requises pour pouvoir modéliser et analyser chacun des éléments d'un STS. Certaines de ces exigences ont été remplies grâce à l'utilisation de techniques de modélisation existantes, les autres grâce à l'extension et au raffinement d'autres techniques. Cette thèse propose une approche qui intègre 3 techniques en particulier : FRAM (centrée sur les fonctions organisationnelles), HAMSTERS (centrée les objectifs et activités humaines) et ICO (dédiée à la modélisation du comportement des systèmes interactifs). Cette approche est illustrée par un exemple mettant en œuvre les extensions proposées et l'intégration des modèles. Une étude de cas plus complexe sur la gestion du trafic aérien (changement de route d'un avion en cas de mauvaises conditions météorologiques) est ensuite présentée pour montrer le passage à l'échelle de l'approche. Elle met en avant les bénéfices de l'intégration des modèles pour la prise en compte de la variabilité de la performance des différents éléments d'un STSThe current European Air Traffic Management (ATM) System needs to be improved for coping with the growth in air traffic forecasted for next years. It has been broadly recognised that the future ATM capacity and safety objectives can only be achieved by an intense enhancement of integrated automation support. However, increase of automation might come along with an increase of performance variability of the whole ATM System especially in case of automation degradation. ATM systems are considered complex as they encompass interactions involving humans and machines deeply influenced by environmental aspects (i.e. weather, organizational structure) making them belong to the class of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) (Emery & Trist, 1960). Due to this complexity, the interactions between the STS elements (human, system and organisational) can be partly linear and partly non-linear making its performance evolution complex and hardly predictable. Within such STS, interactive systems have to be usable i.e. enabling users to perform their tasks efficiently and effectively while ensuring a certain level of operator satisfaction. Besides, the STS has to be resilient to adverse events including potential automation degradation issues but also interaction problems between their interactive systems and the operators. These issues may affect several STS aspects such as resources, time in tasks performance, ability to adjust to environment, etc. In order to be able to analyse the impact of these perturbations and to assess the potential performance variability of a STS, dedicated techniques and methods are required. These techniques and methods have to provide support for modelling and analysing in a systematic way usability and resilience of interactive systems featuring partly autonomous behaviours. They also have to provide support for describing and structuring a large amount of information and to be able to address the variability of each of STS elements as well as the variability related to their interrelations. Current techniques, methods and processes do not enable to model a STS as a whole and to analyse both usability and resilience properties. Also, they do not embed all the elements that are required to describe and analyse each part of the STS (such as knowledge of different types which is needed by a user for accomplishing tasks or for interacting with dedicated technologies). Lastly, they do not provide means for analysing task migrations when a new technology is introduced or for analysing performance variability in case of degradation of the newly introduced automation. Such statements are argued in this thesis by a detailed analysis of existing modelling techniques and associated methods highlighting their advantages and limitations. This thesis proposes a multi-models based approach for the modelling and the analysis of partly-autonomous interactive systems for assessing their resilience and usability. The contribution is based on the identification of a set of requirements needed being able to model and analyse each of the STS elements. Some of these requirements were met by existing modelling techniques, others were reachable by extending and refining existing ones. This thesis proposes an approach which integrates 3 modelling techniques: FRAM (focused on organisational functions), HAMSTERS (centred on human goals and activities) and ICO (dedicated to the modelling of interactive systems). The principles of the multi-models approach is illustrated on an example for carefully showing the extensions proposed to the selected modelling techniques and how they integrate together. A more complex case study from the ATM World is then presented to demonstrate the scalability of the approach. This case study, dealing with aircraft route change due to bad weather conditions, highlights the ability of the integration of models to cope with performance variability of the various parts of the ST