A review of the effects of head-worn displays on teamwork for emergency response

Abstract

Head-Worn Displays (HWD) can potentially support the mobile work of emergency responders, but it remains unclear whether teamwork is affected when emergency responders use HWDs. We reviewed studies that examined HWDs in emergency response contexts to evaluate the impact of HWDs on team performance and on team processes of situation awareness, communication, and coordination. Sixteen studies were identified through manual and systematic literature searches. HWDs appeared to improve the quality of team performance but they increased time to perform under some conditions; effects on team processes were mixed. We identify five challenges to explain the mixed results. We discuss four theoretical perspectives that might address the challenges and guide research needs—joint cognitive systems, distributed cognition, common ground, and dynamical systems. Researchers and designers should use process-based measures and apply greater theoretical guidance to uncover mechanisms by which HWDs shape team processes, and to understand the impact on team performance.

Practitioner Summary: This review examines the effects of head-worn displays on teamwork performance and team processes for emergency response. Results are mixed, but study diversity challenges the search for underlying mechanisms. Guidance from perspectives such as joint cognitive systems, distributed cognition, common ground, and dynamical systems may advance knowledge in the area.

Abbreviations: HWD: head-worn display; RC: remote collaboration; DD: data display; ARC: augmented remote collaboration; ACC: augmented collocated collaboration; SA: situation awareness; TSA: team situation awareness; CPR: cardiopulmonary resuscitation; SAGAT: situation awareness global assessment technique; SART: situation awareness rating technique.

Keywords:

• Head-mounted displays
• smart glasses
• emergency response
• team process
• safety-critical systems

Acknowledgements

The authors thank members of the Cognitive Engineering Research Group for feedback on an early draft of the manuscript, and UQ Librarian, Miranda Newell, for advice on the systematic literature search.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Some of the work reported in this paper was summarised by Davidson and Sanderson (2020) in a one-page abstract for the Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 64th Annual Meeting.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council under grant DP180103702. Thomas Davidson was supported further by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.