• Hardware
• Software
• Applications
• • Healthcare
  • Emergency response
  • Maintenance
  • • Objectives of the user tests
    • Participants in the tests
    • Task scenario
    • Experiment setup
    • Testing methodology and procedure
    • Data collection and analysis
    • Results
  • Production

For the implementation of the system, a OQO wearable computer was chosen to meet performance requirements. On this device a Windows XP Professional was running as OS for the application. As physical input devices a USB microphone (speech navigation) and a dataglove (over Bluetooth) were connected to the system. The data glove allows navigation through the navigation bar of the application as well as a identification of RFID chips that can be easily attached to items or persons. A MicroOptical SV-6 head-mounted display was used to present the visual interface.
The functionalities implemented can be classified as workflow and context aware or UI and representation oriented. The workflow and context aware oriented functionalities are indirectly targeting the UI through simplifying check tasks in the maintenance procedure, e.g., a system log on or the recognition (check) of an item. With the introduction of this type of functionality complex navigation becomes in some cases obsolete. It becomes clear by regarding the first step of the procedure Open scheduled procedures (Jobcard):
Computer based systems always require some kind of identification of the user. This happens because of the personalization of the system and primarily of security reasons. Performing the same task on a desktop system a user would simply type in the user name and the password. A maintenance operator equipped with a wearable system has only limited possibilities for entering confidential user information without a common keyboard. The implemented RFID-Reader functionality offers two ways of user support: (1) with the possibility of an automatic login step the user can simply log into the system and get the scheduled jobs for his shift by passing the data glove over a personal RFID chip built in the operator’s jacket. The RFID-Reader is also used (2) to identify items (like circuit breaker panels or seats) which have an inherent danger of confusion due to slightly different circuit breaker panels in aircrafts. The same counts for the seats. They look also very similar but can differ depending on the row they are located. The RFID functionality was also implemented for the seat identification.
The UI and Representation oriented functionalities are mainly implemented by the two input modalities (dataglove and the speech navigation) working together with the WUI representation of the content. The working conditions of maintenance operators in aircrafts vary strongly and are in some cases very inconvenient. A switching between the different input modalities becomes evident to give the user the freedom to have a hands free operation as required (with speech navigation). Over a single button on the data glove the input modality can be easily switched over to the other. The user gets feedback of the current input mode via an icon on the WUI-application.
Usually, operators do not need the detailed maintenance manual due to their experience. If they are forced to follow every tiny step of the manual the application would have vast acceptance problems. As a consequence there is the need to adapt the level of detail in the repre-sentation. A function for switching between expertise profiles allows maintenance operators with different qualification levels to switch between top level descriptions and in depth descriptions of the task even while running the application.