Abstract In this article, we present findings concerning how environment can both impact upon and be impacted by knowledge and expertise sharing practices (KES) supported by augmented reality (AR) systems. We draw on findings from a Design Case Study (DCS) carried out for the design and evaluation of an AR system to support KES in complex production contexts. Our results suggest that the proposed system not only changes the perception of the technical environment but is itself gradually perceived as an element of it. The results also reveal changes in the employees’ focus of attention when working with the AR-aid in question and how they individually adapt to it. Moreover, our findings suggest that the proposed system facilitates a change in the proximity between experts and non-experts, bridging spatial and temporal distances, fostering cooperation between those two categories of workers, at the same time that enhance their autonomy. Overall, the results highlight how changes in the social environment of digitised production cannot be separated from changes in the technical environment.

Abstract With the remarkable structural changes that many sectors of the industry are currently experiencing with the advent and introduction of new digital technologies and the push that they are receiving from assorted agendas concerning industrial developments – as those connected with digital transformation and the so-called Industry 5.0 – it sensible to think that different aspects concerning cooperative work will be subject to changes, especially when it comes to issues associated with the use and appropriation of digital technologies. In this contribution, we address the concept of awareness and how it has been impacted by the continuous process of digitalisation and digital transformation within the industry under a practice-centred computing perspective. The study is based on an in-depth interview study featuring 19 participants across 11 different-sized manufacturing companies from the metalworking industry and other related sectors. The data was transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis. Subsequently, we discuss how not only awareness, but also motivation and leadership in production systems have been continuously impacted by these structural changes, at times in a negative way. We elaborate on our findings and reflect upon how existing CSCW notions, as coordination mechanisms, common information spaces and articulation spaces can be used to inform the design of new technologies that could enhance awareness and mitigate potentially negative impacts. In particular, we extend the notion of articulation spaces to include the role of a group mediator, which has been found relevant to support cooperation in industrial settings undergoing digital transformation.

Across the years, production systems have recurrently turned to new digital technologies in the search for enhanced productivity and competitiveness. More recently, a prelude to a Fourth Industrial Revolution has been heard, announcing Industry 4.0 as the future of production and manufacture. It has been claimed that cyber-physical production systems would bring drastic changes in the way that people go about engaging in work. It is therefore sensible to think that the way that cooperation is accomplished within production contexts will be also affected. Based on an in-depth interview study featuring 21 participants from different companies, we go on to discuss which challenges have been emerging from recent digitalisation of production work in regard to the way that workers cooperate in accomplishing their productive activities. Our results suggest that there are associated group effects - e.g., group polarisation, hidden profiles, and exclusion - that pose relevant challenges for cooperation within these settings. In this contribution, we go on to present and discuss these results and to propose articulation spaces, which conceptually bring together aspects of coordination mechanisms and common information spaces, as a potential solution for some of those challenges.

Fast-paced knowledge and expertise sharing (KES) is a typical demand in contemporary workplaces due to dynamic markets and ever-changing work practices. Past and current computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) research has long been investigating how computer technologies can support people with KES. Recent claims have asserted that augmented reality- (AR-)based cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) are poised to bring significant changes in the ways that KES unfolds in manufacturing contexts. This paper scrutinises such claims by implementing a short-term evaluation of an AR-based CPPS and assessing how it can potentially support (1) the generation of AR content by experienced production workers and (2) the visualisation and processing of such content by novice workers. We, therefore, contribute a user study to the CSCW community that sheds light on the use of a particular type of AR-based CPPS for KES in industrial contexts.?