Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Computer Science & Information Systems
Gwendolyn Tennell - Louisiana State University Shreveport
Co-Author(s): Jesse Gamez and Cheryl Seals, Auburn University, Auburn, AL
Ergonomic professionals have a need to conform from paper to technology in order to save time and increase productivity. In this digital age of time technology, including mobile devices in the work environment is essential to making a product better. A good comprehensible, aesthetically pleasing, efficient interface should be used to minimize complexity for the user. The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) Tool Kit was created so that users with a range of experience in ergonomic analysis would be able to employ it to analyze task in a workplace for a variety of ergonomic risk factors. Improving the design and implementing a simple, anesthetic interface for mobile computing in our program, will allow the ergonomics useful success in the work place. The Tool Kit is comprised of 20 ergonomic assessment tools that can be used to analyze jobs for a variety of ergonomic risk factors. We have created the ERGOeasy project to better assist the ergonomic specialist in selecting which tool to use for risk assessment based on a given scenario. Our aim is to upgrade from paper, and improve the current interface on the program that we have created. Today’s smart phones provide the same computing power and similar capabilities as the PCs of a decade ago. Therefore it is wise to provide applications for hand held devices. The focus of this research has been on improving the app interface design for human-computer interaction. I believe that the conceptual model is one of the most important aspects of a user interface. Therefore it is very important that the conceptual model is complete and consistent. By reducing the complexity of our ERGO code, we have been able to make the program simpler, which makes it run more efficiently and look more aesthetically pleasing. After all implementations are decided on, the next step will be to build the app for the ergonomics hand held device. Apple has customized a language, Swift, which gives almost anyone the ability to write apps for the Apple platform. Swift is a programming language that is tuned to work with existing Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks. These frameworks contain all the classes used in Mac and iOS apps to support interoperability. Being safe, powerful, and modern are the three pillars Swift is built on. Google marketed the release of the App Inventor for Android (AIA) visual programming environment. A major difference between the Android Market and the Apple App Store is that the Android Market is open, while the Apple App Store is gated. Any handset manufacturer can use Android as a software development platform. The software stack in the Android operating system, which is built on a modified Linux kernel, contains Java applications running on a virtual machine, and system components are written in Java, C, C++, and XML. Building an app for the ergonomics hand held device is clearly the next step in saving time and increasing productivity.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): CRA-W, Computing Research Association Women; CDC, The Coalition To Diversify Computing; IAAMCS, Institute For African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences
Faculty Advisor: Cheryl Seals, sealscd@auburn.edu
Role: I reduced the code from O(n^2) to O(n), therefore making it possible to reduce time and cost for a company. I designed the interface for the app.