Through our work in the field of human factors, usability training and evaluation, we are creating and delivering educational resources aimed at contributing to improving the health, safety and green skills in construction. Our ultimate goal is to make the sector more attractive — especially for young blue-collar workers, women, and students in technical colleges and universities. In addition, to evaluate the human factors involved in using our HumanTech technologies, from worker assessment to safety, health and ethical issues.
One of our tasks at HumanTech is to identify the users’ needs at an early stage and incorporate them into our design process.
In this article, we share our work on assessing workers’ technology acceptance, with which we want to provide a sequential and continuous evaluation of our HumanTech wearables system and human-robot interactions (part of the tasks belonging to our Work Package 6).
Why does worker assessment play a key role in HumanTech?
Advanced technology such as exoskeletons, smart glasses and wearable sensors can significantly impact workers’ behaviour. Similarly, using collaborative robots on construction sites is a considerable challenge.
Although technologies are designed to help workers, they can have the opposite effect in the work environment, especially when different technologies are combined. Workers may feel monitored, restricted in their movements or stressed by information overload. And a good working environment must pay special attention to the workers’ needs.
With this in mind, our partners at the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), as Work Package 6 leaders, BAUA and Tecnalia, evaluated different HumanTech technologies, focusing on user requirements, acceptance and usability.
They then presented their findings to construction workers during several workshops/focus groups. In doing so, they used the design thinking approach — the user-centred approach to innovation, which draws on the designer’s toolkit to integrate people’s needs, technology possibilities and requirements for business success.
Involving users from the start is essential for us to develop human-centred technologies, one of the pillars of our research activities. We do this through a co-creation methodology to ensure we integrate our results to build a greener, more efficient and safer construction industry.
The HumanTech technologies we have evaluated for the workers’ assessment
- Exoskeleton
- Interactive robots
- Extended reality (XR) glasses
After collecting our conclusions, we presented them in three workshops/focus groups in Spain and Ireland, organised by different organisations in our HumanTech team.
1st focus group: 16th May 2023
- Organising partner: ACCIONA.
- Location: Alicante (Spain). CEIP (Center of Early Childhood and Primary Education) La Pau.
2nd focus group: 15th June 2023
- Organising partner: ACCIONA.
- Location: San Sebastián (Spain). New Penitentiary Center of San Sebastián.
3rd focus group: 23rd June 2023
- Organising partner: Technological University of the Shannon (TUS).
- Location: Limerick (Ireland). Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board (LCETB)
Who were the participants in our focus groups?
One of the first activities we carried out to organise the focus groups was identifying which functions and people from the construction environment should be involved and what level of influence they should have.
We then identified three relevant stakeholders for HumanTech, which were present in all our focus groups:
- Apprentices
- Workers
- Supervisors (site responsible person, engineer or OSH manager)
For us, it was essential to ensure the participants belonged to these construction target groups.
As we presented in a previous work (the results of which are not yet public), we provided a sociodemographic characterisation of construction workers based on a survey of German employees. Our analysis shows that the majority of the workers are men and are between 50 and 60 years old.
At HumanTech, we aim to broaden our user group’s typical profile. Therefore, we looked for participants of all genders and ages.
We recruited them through partners participating in the sessions. Participation was voluntary and took place during regular working/training hours.
The table below describes the sociodemographic measures for all participants of the three workshops.
What were the results?
We asked participants about the task changes, benefits and challenges they expected from using our technologies in the short and long term.
Most of their answers indicate a positive view towards their use and that they expect a reduction of physical strain and improvements in efficiency and handling of repetitive and dangerous tasks.
However, some participants expressed concerns about the suitability of these technologies for certain tasks, as well as issues related to maintenance, reliability and worker perception and acceptance.
Regarding the use of interactive robots, participants expect improvements in health by reducing injuries and physical workload, especially in the long term.
As for exoskeletons, they see benefits in injury prevention and specific applications for certain tasks. Challenges include concerns about comfort and mobility, unstructured environments, safety and physical health, maintenance and reliability, worker perception and acceptance, economic factors, and the need for training.
For XR glasses, participants see benefits in worker training, learning, and skill development, as well as specific applications for prototyping and design and planning phases. Challenges include technical issues, health and safety concerns, and worker perception and acceptance. Overall, participants named challenges more nuanced than benefits, with concerns about suitability for certain tasks, maintenance, reliability, and worker perception and acceptance being common themes.
Workers’ expectations and concerns
In conclusion, most workers have a positive view of these technologies, and many expect them to improve their efficiency, reduce physical strain, and protect their health by handling repetitive and dangerous tasks.
However, some are concerned about their suitability for certain activities and issues related to their battery life, maintenance, worker acceptance or using them in unstructured environments and difficult terrains.
In addition, it is important to consider the principles of interaction with these technologies, as experienced and inexperienced users have different expectations towards them.
More experienced workers have higher expectations of the interaction principles of innovative technologies, particularly in terms of suitability for the task and self-descriptiveness. This may be due to previous experience in technology-driven development or implementation processes of a new system, which could have had negative consequences such as frustration or additional mental workload.
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