Mina Saghafian will defend her doctoral thesis “An Investigation of Organizational Challenges of Development, Implementation and Adoption of Immersive Visual Technologies in Safety-Critical Industries” on June 3, 2022 at 10:15.
The Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, NTNU has appointed the following committee to evaluate the thesis:
- Professor Annette Kluge, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
- Professor Christopher Baber, University of Birmingham, UK
- Associate Professor Berit Overå Johannesen, NTNU
The candidate’s main supervisor has been Professor Karin Laumann, NTNU. The candidate’s co-supervisor has been Senior Researcher Martin Rasmussen Skogstad, NTNU Samfunnsforskning.
Summary
In modern organizations we see an increased speed, scope and complexity of technological changes, but fewer technology change projects are successful. This is not only due to technological factors but also organizational factors and the broader context in which change takes place. To have a successful technology change process, we must identify the important factors prior, during and after new technology changes within the context. To facilitate this process, we have developed a thematic map of the important factors and have identified the challenges and the ways to improve the technology change process. Each technology implementation and adoption round will increase or decrease the momentum for future technology changes, based on its success or failure.
One of the popular technological trends across industries is Immersive Visual Technology (IVT), including Virtual and Augmented Reality. The former allows us to experience (virtual) worlds that are hard to access or to create in the real world, while the latter provides additional layer of information to what we see in the real world. We found out that many of the challenges of introduction and use of IVT resembles that of the previous technology changes. However, these technologies have additional technology and context specific challenges as the technology is still immature and evolving.
More human factors consideration is needed to address IVT-specific technological challenges and the organizational context in which IVT is introduced and used. Training for both developers and users is needed, on hard skills but also soft skills, when it comes to designing IVT involving all key stakeholders. Consequently, an ongoing communication, coordination and participation of all key stakeholders in change process is needed to remove organizational barriers to change, and improve support mechanisms for technology use, within and beyond the boundaries of one organization.
Due to the exploratory nature of the research objective, I used a qualitative research approach, and conducted literature reviews and interviews. Thematic analysis of the data identified the most important and salient themes and how they are related. Furthermore, important themes specific to IVT development, implementation and adoption were identified and improvement for better IVT change process were put forth.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 764951.