Supporting human factors and ergonomics professionals in anticipating future work changes in response to the anthropocene.

Ergonomics is evolving towards including a broader consideration of ecological and political factors in the design of work environments by adopting an interconnected systems paradigm, highlighting the importance of considering the ecological and political impacts of business. The emergence of 'green ergonomics' encourages sustainable human systems integrated in their natural environment, while respecting ethical values such as respect for human rights and diversity. On the one hand, this is leading to new areas of ergonomic research and intervention, such as energy management and corporate CSR, and on the other, to the need to develop specific skills to anticipate the future in innovative ways.

A COVID-19 outbreak on board ship: Analysis of the sociotechnical system of epidemiological management in the French Navy.

In late 2019, an epidemic of SARS-CoV-2 broke out in central China. Within a few months, this new virus had spread right across the globe, officially being classified as a pandemic on 11 March 2020. In France, which was also being affected by the virus, the government applied specific epidemiological management strategies and introduced unprecedented public health measures.

COVID-19: A Boon or a Bane for Creativity?

In many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a period of lockdown that impacted individuals' lifestyles, in both professional and personal spheres. New problems and challenges arose, as well as opportunities. Numerous studies have examined the negative effects of lockdown measures, but few have attempted to shine light on the potential positive effects that may come out of these measures.

Decision-making during nonroutine outbreak management: Toward an exploration of experts' creative decisions.

Decision-making during critical outbreak management may require standard strategies, but also more creative ones. Our goal was to characterize the expert decision processes that take place during critical situations, where rule-based strategies and usual procedures cannot be satisfactorily applied. More specifically, we focused on the strategies experts use to deal with epidemiological problems, depending on the complexity of the situation.

Brainstorming variants to favor creative design.

The design process in preventive and prospective ergonomic contexts requires creativity. However, user-centered methods are not usually aimed at supporting creative design. We therefore devised two variants of the seminal brainstorming technique to favor ideation during design activities.

Enhancing collaborative creativity with virtual dynamic personas.

In many sectors, designers have to develop products that are creative, and thus both new and adapted to the context. They can use a variety of methods to favor their creative design activities, including a new one that we have developed, featuring dynamic personas. This method allows participants to interact in real time in a virtual space with an avatar that represents an archetypal future user and provides them with information about this future user throughout the interactions.

Time-Interval Emphasis in an Aeronautical Dual-Task Context: A Countermeasure to Task Absorption.

Objective: We tested a training method intended to prevent unsafe aeronautical behavior (i.e., too much time spent gazing inside the cockpit) induced by the modern cockpit, by teaching individuals to perform a task complementing the see-and-avoid mandatory safety task within a limited time interval.

Division of labor as an emergent phenomenon of social coordination: The example of playing doubles-pong.

In many daily situations, our behavior is coordinated with that of others. This study investigated this coordination in a doubles-pong task. In this task, two participants each controlled a paddle that could move laterally near the bottom of a shared computer screen.

Playing 'Pong' Together: Emergent Coordination in a Doubles Interception Task.

In this contribution we set out to study how a team of two players coordinated their actions so as to intercept an approaching ball. Adopting a doubles-pong task, six teams of two participants each intercepted balls moving downward across a screen toward an interception axis by laterally displacing participant-controlled on-screen paddles. With collisions between paddles resulting in unsuccessful interception, on each trial participants had to decide amongst them who would intercept the ball and who would not.

Creativity as action: findings from five creative domains.

The present paper outlines an action theory of creativity and substantiates this approach by investigating creative expression in five different domains. We propose an action framework for the analysis of creative acts built on the assumption that creativity is a relational, inter-subjective phenomenon. This framework, drawing extensively from the work of Dewey (1934) on art as experience, is used to derive a coding frame for the analysis of interview material.

Designing future products: what difficulties do designers encounter and how can their creative process be supported?

To remain competitive, companies must regularly offer new products to consumers. A major challenge for designers is therefore to come up with design solutions and define products that are both new and adapted to future users and usages. Although classic methods and ergonomic recommendations are useful in most run-of-the-mill design contexts, they are of limited benefit when the design situation requires greater creativity.