Thesis defense of Erik Aranburu Zabalo

Thesis defense of Erik Aranburu Zabalo

Title of the thesis: "Demox: Nuevo modelo de trabajo de diseño y evaluación de la UX en interfases industriales". Obtained the SOBRESALIENTE qualification.

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• Title of the thesis: "Demox: Nuevo modelo de trabajo de diseño y evaluación de la UX en interfases industriales"
• Court:
  • President: Dr. D. Jose Antonio Diego Más
  • Vocal: Dr. D.Iñigo Bediaga/li>
  • Vocal: Dr. D. Rikardo Bueno Zabalo
  • Vocal: Dra. Dª. Isabelle Hupont Torres
  • Secretary: Dr. D. Roberto Uribeetxeberria Ezpeleta

Abstract

The arrival of the new era of Industry 4.0 at the beginning of the 2010 decade has significantly changed the landscape of industrial reality. This new paradigm includes new technologies such as cyberphysical systems, the Internet of Things, Big Data and Cloud Computing in manufacturing processes. These intelligent systems are capable of collecting, storing and studying data to offer new products and services that optimize production processes and exploit the full potential of this new industry. In this context, operators will begin to acquire more strategic, decision-making and problem-solving functions, evolving towards the concept of Operator 4.0. To this end, working environments and especially industrial interfaces will have to be adapted to the needs and characteristics of the operators, so that they can use the information obtained from the new technologies to make the most of their strengths and capabilities. Given this situation, user experience (UX) is presented as one of the disciplines that shows the greatest potential in the design and evaluation of industrial interfaces (Laschke et al., 2020). Beyond the pragmatic aspects that seek the efficiency of task execution, UX focuses on designing interactions that meet the emotional needs of people (Hassenzahl, 2010). In fact, industrial systems designed based on the UX perspective, in addition to increasing the efficiency of operators, will generate positive emotions that impact on their motivation and involvement, increasing intelligence, decision-making capacity and facilitating learning processes (Kaasinen et al., 2019). In order to facilitate the introduction of UX design and evaluation aspects of industrial interfaces in manufacturing companies, this doctoral thesis describes the development of the DEMOX model (Design and Evaluation for Machine-Operator eXperiencies). The model presents a working procedure that allows the evaluation of the current experience of operators with industrial interfaces and enables the proposal of new solutions. To this end, it proposes a user centered evaluation method called eXperience Capturer (XC) and the expert evaluation tool HEMEI. In this way, it offers a working model for creating new interface solutions that allow operators to acquire the new roles of Operator 4.0, creating interactions that, on the one hand, increase their efficiency and performance in the execution of tasks and, on the other hand, increase their psychological well-being at work. In this research, the process for the development of the DEMOX model is shown. In the first chapter, once the subject has been contextualized, the objectives and hypotheses of the investigation are listed, along with the methodology applied. In the second chapter, the literature review is conducted in the field of UX evaluation and specifically in the industrial context. The third chapter describes the XC evaluation method, together with the MHLAB I case study developed for its validation. The fourth chapter shows the HEMEI tool, with the description of its aspects and the MHLAB II case study executed for its validation. The fifth chapter presents the DEMOX working model, which describes a design and evaluation procedure for industrial interfaces composed of the methods described above. Two case studies, MHLAB III and MHLAB IV, are shown for validation. Finally, the main conclusions of the doctoral thesis are presented and proposals for future lines of research are described.