User-centered design of an augmented reality inspection tool for industry 4.0 operators

In the context of Industry 4.0, the Operator 4.0 paradigm plays a crucial role in seamlessly integrating new digital technologies into smart factories. These technologies are designed to accommodate workers with varying skills, capabilities, and preferences. To promote the adoption of these innovative digital tools and ensure high user acceptance, it is essential to prioritize human factors and place workers at the heart of the development process. This can be achieved through structured design strategies, such as those employed in user-centered design approaches. Within this framework, this paper introduces an innovative Augmented Reality tool designed to facilitate and streamline real-time inspection activities performed by operators on assembled products at the workplace. The development of this tool was based on a user-centered design approach, which actively engaged end-users at different stages of design and testing phases. User studies were conducted using a real case study to evaluate the usability and user acceptance of the proposed solution. The results are encouraging, indicating a promising path forward for the effective and valid implementation of this AR tool in an industrial setting.