Roadmap Design for Envisioning Future Work Styles Using Human Augmentation Technologies

Abstract

A great deal of attention is paid to the transformation of current work styles to sustainable ones by means of human augmentation technologies (HATs). However, it is still unclear how HATs would satisfy the potential needs for future work styles in the post-COVID era and what HATs need to be further developed in order to satisfy these needs. Drawing on the backcasting-based roadmap design method, this article aims to develop a roadmap to envision future work styles using HATs. For this purpose, we organized an expert workshop to extract various HATs and needs for work styles and identified the gaps between the HATs and work styles. Based on the total of 121 keywords generated during the workshop, we described several storylines using both forecasting and backcasting approaches. The results showed that higher priority is placed on flexibility and diversity in the work style. From a technological viewpoint, communication technologies, digitalization of skills, and agent technologies seem promising to change our work styles to more desirable ones. In addition, diverse work styles in a physical or virtual space will be enabled by HATs, removing time and space limitations. The present study provides a useful framework for developing the research agenda of HATs in the context of work style design.