FW-HTF-P: Addressing the Wearable Technology Acceptance Gap for Industrial Workers Performing Repetitive Motion Work

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This Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) planning project will advance fundamental knowledge concerning the acceptance and use of wearable health and performance monitoring technologies in the industrial workplace. Although wearables such as fitness tracking watches are used extensively by consumers, there has not been widespread acceptance of wearables within industrial manufacturing. Wearable devices can enhance worker safety, assist in the early detection of potential repetitive motion injuries, and provide information that allows safer and more efficient operations. But they can also present privacy and ethical risks. This project involves fundamental research into potential reasons for non-acceptance of wearable health and performance monitoring technology, challenges faced when wearables are used, risk factors and mitigations, including those related to privacy and ethical concerns. The project investigates real and perceived barriers from the perspectives of workers, management, and organizations. The project will promote the progress of science and advance national health, prosperity and welfare by contributing new knowledge and new conceptual frameworks related to wearable device acceptance and use in manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics. The project will identify key barriers to wearable technology integration in industrial workplaces, and critical differences between individuals and organizations in adopting new technology. A set of focus group interviews and round table discussions will identify stakeholder perceptions of cost effectiveness, safety and risk, usability, comfort, training and education, implementation, and technological acceptance. Stakeholder groups include workers and managers from industrial manufacturing businesses, future workers drawn from communiversity students and faculty, and workforce development boards and organizations at the city, county, and state levels. Feedback will be analyzed through qualitative data coding. The goal is to develop a novel technology acceptance model that will help all stakeholders understand the complex relationships between technological acceptance and perceptions of cost effectiveness, safety, security, privacy, risk, usability, comfort, and implementation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.