Using Experimental Vignettes to Study Early-Stage Automation Adoption
This addresses the challenge of predicting worker concerns in early-stage automation for workplace design, though it appears incremental as it applies an existing method to a new context.
The researchers tackled the problem of studying AI adoption effects on workers before technology development by using experimental vignettes to test system impacts in work contexts, reporting their experiences from a workshop.
When discussing the future of work and in detail the concerns of workers within and beyond established workplace settings, technology-wise we act on rather new ground. Especially preserving a meaningful work environment gains new importance when introducing disruptive technologies. We sometimes do not even have the technology which effects we are willing to discuss. To measure implications for employees and thus create meaningful design variants we need to test systems and their effects before developing them. Confronted with the same problem we used the experimental vignette method to study the effects of AI use in work contexts. During the workshop, we will report our experiences.