Younger Beginners, Older Retirees:Head-mounted Displaysand Demographic Change

Abstract: Demographic change and its consequences are tremendous challenges for industry and service enterprises (Dul et al., 2012). That implies the development of future working systems and technologies, which have to consider aspects of demographic change. Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) may serve as intelligent solutions for multiple manufacturing scenarios by providing process knowledge already during fabrication and manufacturing. Since the early days, HMD-manufacturers have striven to improve technical and ergonomic characteristics of HMDs. Generic ergonomic aspects have already been investigated but the extent to which age influences workload and performance when using an HMD is merely known. Additionally, little is known about the acceptance of HMDs within different age groups. In this paper, we address these issues and present an empirical study (n = 40) analyzing the effect of HMDs on task execution time and workload (NASA Task Load Index). Two different age groups (18-39, 40-60 years) performed a manufacturing task supported by instructions displayed on an HMD. It is shown that elderly perform as good as young participants while there are significant differences concerning subjective effort. Young participants rate manufacturing tasks performed with an HMD to be more effortful as elderly. Regarding the acceptance of the HMD, we found that older participants are more likely to reject the HMD than younger ones.

Keywords: Wearable computing, demographic change, head-mounted displays, ergonomics

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100463

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