Product Solutions for Occupational Health and Safety Risks – A Digital Tool

Abstract: Today, there are clearly defined directives and laws that regulate the work environment in Sweden, but despite this, there are still deficiencies in the work environment for companies. Physical work has a particularly high risk of developing occupational injuries, with heavy lifting being one of the contributing factors. Companies work in different ways to improve their work environment and a common process used is SWEM - Systematic Work Environment Management, developed by SWEA - The Swedish Work Environment Authority. SWEM follows a model that has four recurring steps: investigate, assess, action, and control. There is support and assistance that companies can access, it can be costly and require the company to have prior knowledge of health and safety work to solve the problems. The main problem for companies that do not succeed in their SWEM work, is the step between the assessment and action. There are available and functioning risk assessment methods and product solutions today, but no obvious link between them, particularly for the products. The project aimed to create a service with an associated digital prototype that will link the results of risk assessments to possible product solutions that can reduce the risk of injuries in physical ergonomics. Furthermore, to increase the understanding of how the process between assessed risks and preventive actions can be simplified and visualized to gain a better understanding of how the work environment can be improved. The project work is mainly supported by qualitative data and is based on several interviews with, e.g. ergonomists, physiotherapists, and work environment specialists, which were then analyzed with the Thematic Network method. It emerged that Communication, Visualization, Usability, The Individual, Problem Understanding, and Conditions are the basic elements that must be considered in the solution for the service to work and to fulfill its purpose. These elements were used as a basis for the service and with the help of different design methods such as Mind Map, How Might They? and Crazy 8s, three concepts were created. The concepts were tested on several users and resulted in a final concept that was validated further through user testing. Lastly, the final result was a service with an associated digital prototype that has a short risk assessment that uses AI to suggest products that can minimize the risks detected in the analysis. To summarize, the final prototype may be a basis for future implementation.