Finally: Joy at Work

Summer is over and Joy at Work is finally here. Well, at least that is the slogan for the Nordic Ergonomic Society’s yearly conference – NES 2017. This year it is three days of keynotes and presentation sessions in Lund, Sweden, at the Ingvar Kamprad Design Centre. As human-computer interaction ows some of its heritage to ergonomics, there are more than a few interesting presentations from our perspective. I notice that there are some presentations relating to eHealth which seem highly relevant to our DISA project, for instance.

On the whole, the conference sessions cover a lot of themes relating to ergonomics, its hard to identify any specific trends. On the contrary, I think the conference width is a good reminder of how complex working life actually is. Perhaps the inclusion of a special session for presentations relating to flexible workplaces is the strongest indicator of a hot new topics.

Monday ended with a tour of the lab facilities of the host, the division of Ergonomics and Aerosol Technology. This was a really pleasant surprise as the five stations in different labs revealed five very engaged researchers and some at times very hands on experiences of various equipment. I think a couple of the presenters could almost have persuaded me to change career. Science at its best.

Then there is also one presentation by myself on Tuesday afternoon, where I will discuss some of our experiences relating to the assessment of the Digital Work Environment in the wild. In a way, this presentation is just a teaser, as I will write more on this issue the coming months. For the very same reason I do hope I will get some input from the audience.