Project duration: 2009 - 2012

Project manager: Jens Ziegler

Partners: Südsachsenwasser GmbH

Funding: TU Dresden

Enterprise Information Systems increasingly provide mobile subsystems, so-called Mobile Information Systems, for ubiquitous access to enterprise information for service and maintenance personnel working on-site. Online, real-time access to enterprise information without media discontinuity promises higher accuracy, efficiency and immediate responsiveness of business work flows. However, the design of suitable interaction styles and usable user interfaces for Mobile Information Systems in industrial applications is challenging. There are numerous preconditions including

• environmental, technical, organizational and legal restrictions require high ergonomic standard
• a strong focus on primary task as primary activity, whereas the interaction with the Mobile Information Systems is only a secondary activity
• proven existing work flows, which are usually mandatory and at least partially prescribed by legal or certification authority.

Aim of the project is the design and evaluation of patterns of interaction and interface design for Mobile Information Systems in industrial applications based of the concept of wearable computing. Previous research has already addressed these issues using wearable systems in various configurations. Shortcomings of most existing approaches are the missing generalization and the weak empirical confirmation of the revealed observations, the weak foundation on formalized work flow models and the strong technology-centric design rationale that oftentimes lead to technologically impressive yet unusable solutions. The InteractBAN project thus strives for simplicity, user-centric design, strong empirical confirmation in industrial settings, and a generalization of the revealed results. Therefore, the project comprises the following objectives:

• Design and evaluation of ergonomic, intuitive and natural interaction metaphors for typical maintenance work flows
• Design and evaluation of a distributed, adaptive user interface consisting of multimodal input and output devices organized as a wireless Body Area Network
• Integration into existing work flows based on a formalized and confirmed work flow model for industrial maintenance for empirical system evaluation
• Development of an evaluation framework for Mobile Information Systems in industrial settings

The potential outcomes of this project include

• Empirically confirmed interaction, user interface and usability patterns for Mobile Information Systems in industrial settings
• Novel multimodal user interfaces based on networked input and output devices
• A refined and consistent evaluation methodology for mobile work in industrial settings

For more information, go to Publications page (currently available in German only).