Wearable cognitive assistants in a factory setting: a critical review of a promising way of enhancing cognitive performance and well-being

Rapid technological innovations are constantly influencing the complexification and automatization of the work lines pushing human operators to use diverse cognitive processes for supervising complex industrial machines. This urges factories to offer wearable cognitive assistants to human operators to analyze, integrate and maintain a considerable amount of information. The aim of this review is twofold. First, we borrow theoretical elements from the working memory literature to question the way these wearable cognitive assistants could optimize human operators’ cognitive load. Second, we argue that Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Job Characteristics Model (JCM) may theoretically predict the effectiveness of cognitive wearable assistants in enhancing the person–job fit, namely their cognitive performance and well-being. A critical review method was used to collect and summarize the most studied models associated with application of wearable devices in the workplace. Our review suggests that the current literature on working memory give useful insights concerning the way in which information should be displayed to operators to optimize the efficiency of wearable cognitive assistants. Moreover, JCM suggests original explanations on the way they can facilitate access to information and in turn increase job satisfaction. Finally, a small number of studies that used TAM with wearable devices in an industrial setting provide some interesting theoretical and empirical evidence on the acceptance of wearable cognitive assistants. As a conclusion, we argue that using wearable cognitive assistants properly would enhance both cognitive performance and well-being of human operators through promoting the person–job fit.

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