DTASF 2016 - 1st Int. Workshop on Design Thinking in the Age of Smart Factories

Sebastian Büttner, Institute Industrial IT, sebastian.buettner-AT-hs-owl.de
Henrik Mucha, Institute Industrial IT, henrik.mucha-AT-hs‐owl.deSebastian
Robert, Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, sebastian.robert-AT-iosb‐ina.fraunhofer.de
Björn Kroll, Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, bjoern.kroll-AT-iosb‐ina.fraunhofer.de
Andrei Günter, Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, andrei.guenter-AT-iosb‐ina.fraunhofer.de
Carsten Röcker, Institute Industrial IT and Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, carsten.roecker-AT-hs-owl.de
Focus:
The world of manufacturing is increasingly moving from traditional systems of mass-production to the age of smart factories equipped with networked cyber-physical systems. Generally, two opposing trends can be observed in the wake of this development: On the one hand, the increasing degree of automation leads to a decreasing number of manually produced goods. As a result, human labour shifts from manual production towards operating complex machines. On the other hand, shorter innovation and product life cycles are accompanied by higher product diversity and smaller lot sizes. This in return decreases the cost-effectiveness of establishing complete automation of the manufacturing process. Hence, human labour within complex technical systems will remain highly relevant. This very fact manifests the need for re-assessing the design of industrial human-machine interfaces. Admittedly, HCI research has already begun to look into the implications of the rise of cyber-physical systems and addressed some of the issues arising from it, e.g. the diminished feedback and the changes in task structures. However, when manufacturing systems become smart environments, several questions haven’t been answered fully just yet:
? How can people interact with smart environments in manufacturing?
? How can we give feedback to users of complex cyber-physical systems?
? How can we represent huge amounts of data that such systems generate in a meaningful way to the user?
Parts of the answer might be found due to the availability of new technologies and input modalities that allow for the exploration of novel ways of interacting with smart environments in manufacturing. Since users expectations regarding usability keeps rising and a well-designed user experience becomes a key differentiator for product developers, these issues are steadily gaining importance. That being said, the workshop shall therefore provide free space for exploring these questions and serve as a platform for communication and the exchange of ideas among HCI researchers and practitioners. We are looking for contributions from the field of HCI that might spark new ways of thinking and prepare the field for new approaches affecting the human-centered design of industrial user interfaces.