Sustainable system of systems at work: unravelling (some of) the complexity of farmers' transition to sustainability.

To support sustainable development, several researchers in ergonomics propose a comprehensive approach to work situations or the systems in which they are embedded. This article empirically instantiates one of the proposed models - the Sustainable System of Systems (SSoS) model - in the case of the work of farmers engaged in agroecological transitions. It thus explores complexity regarding sustainability, and to highlight its contributions and limits. Based on a case study, our results illustrate how the macro, meso and micro levels of SSoS are finely articulated in workers' concerns, decisions, and trajectories to sustainability. We enrich this approach with a diachronic method to support the actors involved in such transitions as they navigate the complexities of sustainable transition.Practitioner summary: The research proposes insights into how farmers manage their transition to more sustainable practices, by revealing the various systems influencing that transition. It highlights: (1) farmers' development of a systemic and temporal approach to this transition, and the impacts that the different levels of the system have on one another; and (2) methodological issues related to the development of long-term ergonomic actions to support navigation and copying within the complexity of sustainable transition.

Promises of industry 4.0 under the magnifying glass of interdisciplinarity: revealing operators and managers work and challenging collaborative robot design.

The goal of this article is to propose a cross-perspective around Collaborative Robotics-seen as a remarkable example of technologies 4.0 in an industrial context-by calling on sociology, activity-centred ergonomics, engineering, and robotics expertises. The development of this cross-perspective is thought to be a key issue to improve the design of work organisation for the Industry 4.0. After a socio-historical review of promises of Collaborative Robotics, the interdisciplinary approach developed and applied in a French Small & Medium Enterprise (SME) is presented. In this case study, two work situations are focused on in an interdisciplinary perspective: on the one hand, the one of operators whose professional gestures are intended to be supported by collaborative robots, and on the other the one of managers and executives as responsible for socio-technical changes. Our results reveal the technical and socio-organisational challenges faced by SMEs beyond the introduction of given technologies: analysing the relevance and feasibility of cobotisation projects with regard to the complexity of professional gestures and preserving the quality of work and performance under a continuous pressure to change (organisations, technologies). These findings support discussions of promises of collaborative robotics, and more generally Industry 4.0, regarding effective worker/technology collaboration and the possibility of "healthy" and performant work; they reiterate requirements for work-centred and participatory design, for reconnection in a sensory experience in a more and more digitalized work and open ways for more interdisciplinary approaches.

Designers' and users' roles in participatory design: What is actually co-designed by participants?

This research deals with an analysis of forms of participation in a participatory design (PD) process of a software that assesses the sustainability of agricultural cropping systems. We explore the actual forms of participation of designers and users by adapting an Actual Role Analysis in Design approach (Barcellini et al., 2013) to capture the levels of abstraction (conceptual, functional and operational) of participants' discussions. We show that: (1) the process does not only concern the design of the artifact itself, but also the design of the concept of sustainability; (2) all participants (users & designers) have a role in co-designing the concept (in our case, sustainability); (3) some roles and profiles are key to this co-design. We discuss our contributions to both the research and the practices of participatory design. These contributions deal with the production of a method and related knowledge about actual activities in participatory design situations. They may support the development of relevant training programs regarding participatory situations, or be reflexive activities that can help those who are involved in designing and leading in participatory situations, to make improvements.

Designing the safety of healthcare. Participation of ergonomics to the design of cooperative systems in radiotherapy.

This communication deals with the involvement of ergonomists in a research-action design process of a software platform in radiotherapy. The goal of the design project is to enhance patient safety by designing a workflow software that supports cooperation between professionals producing treatment in radiotherapy. The general framework of our approach is the ergonomics management of a design process, which is based in activity analysis and grounded in participatory design. Two fields are concerned by the present action: a design environment which is a participatory design process that involves software designers, caregivers as future users and ergonomists; and a reference real work setting in radiotherapy. Observations, semi-structured interviews and participatory workshops allow the characterization of activity in radiotherapy dealing with uses of cooperative tools, sources of variability and non-ruled strategies to manage the variability of the situations. This production of knowledge about work searches to enhance the articulation between technocentric and anthropocentric approaches, and helps in clarifying design requirements. An issue of this research-action is to develop a framework to define the parameters of the workflow tool, and the conditions of its deployment.

Online epistemic communities: theoretical and methodological directions for understanding knowledge co-elaboration in new digital spaces.

This paper presents, illustrates and discusses a generic framework for studying knowledge co-elaboration in online epistemic communities ("OECs"). Our approach is characterised by: considering knowledge co-elaboration as a design activity; distinguishing discussion and production spaces in OECs; characterising participation via the notion of role; fine-grained analyses of meaning, content and communicative functions in interactions. On this basis, three key issues for ergonomics research on OECs are discussed and illustrated by results from our previous studies on OSS and Wikipedia. One issue concerns the interrelation between design (task) and regulation. Whereas design task-oriented activity is distributed among participants, we illustrate that OCEs function with specialised emerging roles of group regulation. However, the task-oriented activity also functions at an interpersonal level, as an interplay of knowledge-based discussion with negotiation of competencies. Another issue concerns the foci of activity on the (designed) knowledge object. Based on a generic task model, we illustrate asymmetry and distinctiveness in tasks' foci of participants. The last issue concerns how design-use mediation is ensured by specific forms of mediation roles in OECs. Finally we discuss the degree of generality of our framework and draw some perspectives for extending our framework to other OECs.

The recent history of the IEA: an analysis of IEA Congress presentations since 1961.

In this paper we review historical material relating to the growth and coverage of past IEA meetings and congresses. In particular, we report on presentations at IEA Congresses dating back to the first one in Stockholm in 1961. A content analysis of Congress proceedings was carried out and we present findings on changes since 1961 covering: numbers and nationalities of conference participants and the types of topics presented at Congresses. Our findings point to evidence of widening participation at the conferences, in particular delegates drawn from Asia, South East Asia and the Far East. In addition, some topics (e.g., physiology, methodological papers and studies of workload) appear to have waned in popularity over the period, whereas some topics (e.g., ODAM, Cognitive Ergonomics) have grown in popularity. We discuss these findings in the light of other evidence covering historical trends and developments within human factors and ergonomics.