1,721,166 research outputs found
Special issue on ‘new transdisciplinary practices for intelligent manufacturing for industry 4.0’
Full text linkTransdisciplinary Engineering (TE) is an emerging area of research able to evolve traditional engineering approaches by transcending the technical disciplines. It can be successfully applied in different fields, by combining natural sciences, applied sciences, social sciences, and humanities to achieve a higher level of comprehension and awareness of the context in which industrial products, processes, systems, and services will be implemented and experienced by users (Borsato et al. Citation2016). Research in TE also incorporates social science methodologies to acquire knowledge about users and context, and solve ill-defined, socially relevant problems. Based on recent evidence, it can be stated that numerous engineering problems can be characterised as ill-defined and socially relevant, too (Wognum et al. Citation2019)
Usability Testing on Tractor’s HMI: A Study Protocol
No full textThe success of a human-machine interface (HMI) heavily depends on its usability. An highly usable interface allows the user to more easily achieve his/her goals and in general have a better User eXperience (UX). In work environments, a structured and ready-to-use usability testing protocol can encourage companies to carry out this type of study and focus on UX from the early design phases. Even though numerous methods to test usability exist, industrial companies still have great difficulties to apply them and choose the best ones for the specific purposes. They should be guided into the analysis by a universal step-by-step approach, which helps also not experienced designers selecting the most reliable and useful methods among the available ones. In this direction, the paper proposes a structured protocol to focus on UX and guide companies in testing setup, execution and debriefing in an easy and quick way. Checklists are defined to help during user testing and assure its success. As a consequence, end users can be easily involved to give an added value in design problems identification. The novelty of this paper is the definition of a ready-to-use study protocol that can also be used by non-usability experts, in order to make them familiar with UX analysis and extend this practice also in industrial HMI design. As validation, the proposed protocol was applied to the design of interfaces for agricultural tractors during two different stages of the HMI redesign process
VIRTUAL TACTILE SIMULATION: A NOVEL DISPLAY AND THE EFFECTS ON USERS’ TEXTURE PERCEPTION
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Special issue on ‘transdisciplinary approaches to digital manufacturing for industry 4.0’
Full text linkThe concept of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) outlines the vision of a smart factory characterised by the complete networking of all production parts and processes, consisting of real-time control via cyber-physical systems, increased use of robots, intelligent and adaptable production systems, which should contribute to greater productivity through resource efficiency. The convergence of production and interaction, work and communication requires increasingly transdisciplinary competencies for creating a smart factory, which is economically successful and competitive. These competencies consist, among others, of divers expert knowledge, flexibility, and creativity for moving toward I4.0
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