Monitoring and improving performance in human-computer interaction

Abstract

Monitoring an individual's performance in a task, especially in the workplace context, is becoming an increasingly interesting and controversial topic in a time in which workers are expected to produce more, better and faster. The tension caused by this competitiveness, together with the pressure of monitoring, may not work in favour of the organization's objectives. In this paper, we present an innovative approach on the problem of performance management. We build on the fact that computers are nowadays used as major work tools in many workplaces to devise a non-invasive method for distributed performance monitoring based on the observation of the worker's interaction with the computer. We then look at musical selection both as a pleasant and as an effective method for improving performance in the workplace. The proposed approach will allow team coordinators to assess and manage their co-workers' performance continuously and in real-time, using a distributed service-based architecture. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This work is part-funded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by the national funds through the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT; Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within projects FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028980 (PTDC/EEI-SII/1386/2012) and project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2014.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio