Industry 4.0 is a coordinated push for automation in Smart Factories and other Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The increasing complexity of frequently changing production environments challenges shop floor workers to perform well. The tasks they work on are getting less routine and ask for continuous knowledge and skills development. For example, the skills portfolio of workers likely requires improved higher-order thinking and decisionmaking skills. A wide range of research and development efforts already today sets focus on different areas of workplace learning, including performance appraisals, pedagogy and education, technology, and business economics. Bridging the skills gap, however, requires novel user-facing technologies -such as Augmented Reality (AR) and wearables -for human performance augmentation to improve efficiency and effectiveness of staff delivered through live guidance. AR branches out beyond mobile apps with 3Dobject superimposition for marketing purposes to rather complex use cases delivered by a rapidly growing innovation ecosystem of hard-and software providers collaborating closely with R&D organisations. This paper provides a first shared vision on how AR can tackle four different challenges related to handling complexity in a CPS environment: develop intelligent assistance systems for learning and performance assessment at the workplace, adapt job profiles accordingly, and last but not least to address also the issue of work-life balance. The paper concludes with an outline of a research roadmap.

While the System Usability Scale (SUS) is probably one of the most widely used questionnaires to measure the perceived ease of use of interactive systems, there is currently no scientific valid translation in French. This article describes the translation and statistical validation of the French version of the SUS, called F-SUS. On the basis of two translations carried out by a committee of bilingual experts, the various psychometric analyses made it possible to select only one translation. Fidelity measurement, factor analysis and sensitivity measurement obtained results very close or similar to the original version of the SUS. Thus, the F-SUS can be used with confidence by French-speaking usability researchers and practitioners.

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Background: This research focuses on the satisfaction and waiting times perceived by a user during the moments where the interaction between the user and the system is temporarily interrupted (file download, setup of a program, etc.). These waiting times are often sources of anxiety and irritation. They go usually with the presentation of an animated progress bar, allowing the user to visualize the status of the ongoing process. The objective of this research is to study the impact of several progress bars by varying the progress behavior with three different speed. Methods: Three progress bars were tested, each of them having the same display duration of 10 seconds but with different speed. The first progress bar having a speed-up behavior (the progress bar fills to about 30% during the first 5 seconds, then fills completely as it accelerates), the second a slow-down behavior (the progress bar fills to about 70% during the first 5 seconds, then fills completely when decelerating), the third a constant behavior (the progress bar keeps a constant filling rate during the 10 seconds). Eleven hundred twenty seven distinct subjects (controlled IP) were involved, including 105 women and 1022 men. The mean age of the sample was 24.9 years (SD=7.11). Each subject has to play with an online game, which was a pretext to present a standby screen of 10 seconds when one of the three progress bars were displayed in a random manner. Results: The results confirm the existence of a causal link between the perception of waiting time and satisfaction. In addition, a progress bar that follows a slow-down function is significantly more appreciated by the users. An ANOVA-test applied to the comparison of means for each of the progress bars shows that there is a significant difference in the satisfaction of waiting for durations (F(2, 1124)=3.003, MSE=1.099, p=.050, np2=0.270). On the other hand, there is no significant difference in the perception of waiting durations. Conclusions: Our results show in our context of experimentation that a progress bar with a decelerating filling rate provides greater satisfaction than a constant progress bar or a speed-up bar. The results may provide valuable information for the design of human-computer interfaces and for the improvement of user experience. Thus, beyond varying waiting time duration, different levels of users' arousal could be introduced as well as the user feedback with information relevant to the ongoing processes.