What-If Analysis on the Evaluation of User Interface Usability

Introduction

Currently, industrial society is experiencing transformations without precedents. Technological improvements shape how people work and live. For the working sector, transformations that might improve work processes are always on demand. As work is an inseparable part of the human life, transformations in work processes have the potential to impact how humans live. While part of this impact is positive, challenges always exist and must be addressed. For instance, the use of steam power to mechanise production was introduced in First Industrial Revolution, dated around 1760s, creating plenty of opportunities, such as improving production processes and creating new factories and cities (Xu et al., 2018). General challenges to be addressed were to create good work and living conditions in the newly created factories and cities, respectively. Second Industrial Revolution (dated around 1870s) intended to improve production by employing electric power generated from combustion engines, inaugurating the mass production era (Xu et al., 2018). General challenges during that event were related to continue improving professional and social life in dimensions ranging from economy and politics, to urbanisation and transportation. Automated production era is introduced during the Third Industrial Revolution (dated around 1960s), based on electronics and information technology (Xu et al., 2018). Examples of general challenges were related to improvement of several dimensions, such as social aspects of work, diversification in energy sources used in production, development of production, management and governance systems, amid others.

Fourth Industrial Revolution programmes, represented by initiatives such as Industrie 4.0 (also referred to as Industry 4.0) in Germany or Smart Factoring in USA, implies the evolution of industrial workforce, i.e., the use of new types of interactions between human operators and machines (Lorenz et al., 2015). Thanks to technologies such as Big Data Analytics (Russom, 2011), Information Systems (Stair & Reynolds, 2013) and Industrial Internet of Things (Rawat et al. 2017), a new set of applications are possible, bringing improvements in industrial areas such as maintenance, coordination among jobs, decision-making, among others. To achieve production growth, industries escalate the use of technology for employees. Even though, this phenomenon is not restricted to industrial sector, this introduction provides a “thermometer” of how technology use is escalating. Therefore, an increasing number of systems are becoming part of the modern person’s routine, regardless of work position or salary.