Enabling Collaborative Situations (ECS): interest for the taking into account of the work activity in the design and evaluation of human-technology collaborations in contemporary industry

Regardless of the targeted emerging technology, the real final performance is always socio-technical: the relationship between humans and technologies is central. Thus, the decisive question is not “what will the technology be able to do?”, but “what will the human be able to do with the technology?”. In the first case, the human factor comes second: its consideration is most often reduced to safety and questions of training in the proper use of technology. The benefits in terms of physical risks are also often put forward, but are rarely really demonstrated. In the second case, the starting point is the work activity. The various determinants of future performance are then called upon. The possibility for the operator to see his action capacities enriched by the implementation of technology, and in the service of an overall performance, is decisive. The Enabling Collaborative Situation (ECS) is a proposal which corresponds to a work situation where the human and the emerging technology collaborate in such a way that the human is able to extend his possibilities of action, according to the targeted performance. The ECS has a double objective, it is intended to analyze and evaluate a work situation but it is also a practical proposal intended to guide the designers by taking into account these criteria in the design.
A multiple case study (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Yin, 2013) was implemented to investigate the value of the ECS in understanding the successes and failures of technology implementation projects. Interviews with the projects protagonists, observations of work situations designed around the technology and documentary analyses concerning the projects were conducted in two industrial companies concerned by recent technology projects.
It seems that ECS can present several advantages. The ECS is more precise than the expression of satisfaction. In addition, the level of collaboration with the technology varies greatly depending on the technology and the type of task considered. Moreover, some of the ECS criteria are difficult to achieve in the observed projects, such as the increase in possibilities and ways of acting. Although they need to be confirmed and enriched by new work. These results suggest that the ECS could be a useful way of accounting for the contrasting realities of the projects. Thus, the ECS could allow to identify the improvement axes of the project management and to guide the designers in a more demanding way in their consideration of the work activity.