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Escaping the Holodeck: Designing Virtual Environments for Real Organizations

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Human-Technology Interaction

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Abstract

The dominate narrative surrounding Industry 4.0 encourages manufacturing companies to adopt and adapt new forms of smart technologies which include purpose-built sensor platforms, advanced data capture and analytic capabilities, and Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Recognizing that technology fundamentally changes the nature of work, we need to understand how these kinds of tools are affecting organizational structures and skill requirements in order to design technologies that work at work. We conducted a mixed methods VR study which facilitated access to participant observation and interviews (n = 21) on a commercially available VR toolset at a US-based global aviation manufacturer. The VR environment was deeply integrated into the manufacturer’s existing enterprise stack which introduced a whole set of new utility and usability constraints beyond the environment itself that need to be considered when developing useful VR. Our findings provide insights into the impact of VR on human performance augmentation and skill acquisition revealing larger infrastructural challenges and design characteristics which need to be addressed during the development and implementation stages of new digital technologies in industrial workplace settings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Alyssa Rumsey & Christopher A. Le Dantec

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  1. Alyssa Rumsey
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  2. Christopher A. Le Dantec
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Correspondence to Alyssa Rumsey .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute Industrial IT, OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lemgo, Germany

    Carsten Röcker

  2. Institute Industrial IT, OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lemgo, Germany, Human-Centered Information Systems, Clausthal University of Technology, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

    Sebastian Büttner

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Rumsey, A., Le Dantec, C.A. (2023). Escaping the Holodeck: Designing Virtual Environments for Real Organizations. In: Röcker, C., Büttner, S. (eds) Human-Technology Interaction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99235-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99235-4_9

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-99235-4

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