Optimering av digitala arbetsflöden : En Design-science studie om hur omdesign påverkar effektivitet och upplevd användbarhet i ett professionellt informationssystem

Sammanfattning

This thesis investigates how the redesign of digital workflows can affect efficiency and perceived usability in a professional information system within the construction industry. The study was conducted in collaboration with the company Infrakit and focused on selected workflows in the system Infrakit FIELD. The background of the study was that users, in certain tasks, needed to spend unnecessary time finding relevant information or performing tasks that required manual handling. The purpose of the study was to identify problems in existing workflows, develop an interactive prototype with improved solutions, and evaluate how these changes affected users’ efficiency and perceived usability. The study was limited to two workflows: locating specific orthophotos and identifying deviations in mass haul data, for example the rock material transport with the longest distance. The study was conducted using a Design Science Research approach, where an IT artefact in the form of an interactive frontend prototype was developed. Data collection consisted of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Efficiency was measured through time measurements and number of clicks when completing the workflows in both the existing system and the prototype. Perceived usability was examined using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Think-Aloud Protocol (TAP), where users’ comments were analysed through thematic analysis. The results showed that the main problems in the existing system were related to insufficient information structure, manual searching, and a lack of search and sorting functions. In the prototype, the workflows were improved through a clearer structure, search functions, year and month categorisation, and sortable columns. The average time to find orthophotos decreased from 45.2 seconds to 7.0 seconds, while the time to find the transport with the longest distance in the mass haul workflow decreased from 72.0 seconds to 2.2 seconds. The TAP sessions also showed that users experienced the prototype as clearer, faster, and easier to use. The conclusion is that design changes, that were made in the two workflows, lead to clear improvements in both efficiency and perceived usability when they target concrete problems in users’ workflows. However, the results should be interpreted with regard to the limitations of the study, which in this case include a limited number of participants in the tests and the fact that the prototype only represented two specific workflows in Infrakit FIELD.