Information Technologies in Services: Old and New Problems

Human factors information technology design and introduction in the workplace will be discussed with respect to the service sector. Such sector should be one of the main ergonomics field of study, given the fact that it actually employs a still growing majority of the workforce. The first part of the paper is concerned with a tentative conceptual framework for the analysis of the client-performer relation. The authors' thesis is that such relation should be the focus of ergonomic intervention in services. In the second part an ergonomic evaluation of a call center project, performed by experts in human-computer interaction, will be described. Such a project is particularly relevant, given the fact that it is characterized by a highly structured process flow with a large amount of data to be requested over the conversation that takes place during each phone call. Results from the study will be discussed taking into account the technological and organisational aspects of the project. Finally, such results will be taken as evidence that account for the old and new problems of the design and introduction of information technology in the workplace.