Development of a wearable system to capture team (n> 2) interactions in engineering design teams

Abstract

This paper presents the development and ideas behind a comprehensive system prototype of wearable Radiofrequency transceivers, which, by sending small radio packets between devices, are acting as a proxy for dynamically capturing spontaneous human-human and human-object interactions in complex team scenarios. A boundary condition for the design is to minimize intrusion to a level that is comparable to a standard keycard. The system consists of scalable elements that work as low-power stand-alone pieces without any extra infrastructure. The data can be transferred automatically and wirelessly to a computer for post processing. The quantified data is measured by distance and presence of equipment and people to each other. We give examples based on the data we gathered from a pilot study by tracking a team in a laboratory; provide suggestions on how to post process and visualize the data, how to extract useful knowledge therefrom, and how it could be incorporated afterwards in an organization. The overall intention is to combine the data with inputs of managers’ knowledge and inputs from dynamic product data management systems in order to capture and analyze how differences in interactions have a measurable effect on product development process.