From March 5 to 11, the International Spring School on Human Technology Cooperation “smart@work” was held at the Technischen Universität Dresden with 22 participating PhD students and Post-Docs from 15 different countries. During three keynotes, four talks and five workshops, questions about the future of human work were discussed, i.e., how to facilitate cooperation between people and technology as partners on equal footing.
With keynotes from the outstanding experts Axel Platz, Patrick Baudisch, and Stephen Brewster as well as talks by the involved professors, the participants received manifold impulses towards new ideas and discussions during the first half of the week. While focusing on one of the three problem areas of mobile industrial facilities, modular factories and control rooms, participants were asked to employ different perspectives to their topic and to develop novel concepts and solutions during the workshop session.
All participants were highly creative and active anytime, which was also reflected through excited discussions and fascinating concepts. The high diversity of the participants proved to be a positive factor in this regard, not only in cultural differences, but also regarding their different research areas: Expertise in industrial design, acoustic and haptic, or also new interaction modalities led to an immense range of professional experience.
Besides general information on http://smartatwork.org we also created a compilation of additional impressions in a photo gallery. We are happy that the Spring School turned out as such a success and want to thank all involved chairs as well as the university administration for their support.