Building Human-Centric Innovation: Unfolding SEISMEC’s core ideas.
The SEISMEC project aims to enhance European industrial competitiveness by placing human empowerment at the core of technological advancements. During its four years of implementation, SEISMEC will develop human-centric solutions that foster innovation, productivity, and worker well-being across various industries.
But which core aspects lie at the heart of SEISMEC? Follow us as we unfold SEISMEC’s Work Packages (WP) one by one, outlining their key objectives and how they contribute to ensuring the project’s smooth progress towards its overarching goal of enhancing European industrial competitiveness through human-centric innovation.
WP1 – Framework for Human-Centric Assessment
WP1 is focused on creating a theoretical framework to ensure that advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are developed with consideration for their social, cultural, ethical, and organisational impacts. The aim is to ensure that these technologies not only work efficiently but also align with human values and address people’s real needs.
This framework draws on lessons from previous and ongoing European projects that have explored human-centric approaches. By doing so, WP1 ensures that the best practices are applied in SEISMEC, considering the diverse cultural and geographical context of Europe.
WP1 also identifies potential tensions between human-centric values and the implementation of new technologies, such as trust in AI or acceptance in different environments. It aims to provide solutions to address these challenges using the CAPS empowerment factors as a goal, ensuring that the technology is both useful and ethical.
WP2 – Tools and methods towards human-centrism
WP2 is focused on developing practical tools and methods to make advanced technologies more human-centric, ensuring they are used ethically and effectively in real-world environments.
This work package designs guidelines and assessment frameworks to measure the impact of these technologies, while also providing solutions to improve human interaction with them.
WP3 – Pilots in real working environments
WP3 bridges the gap between theory and practice, ensuring that human-centric solutions are applied, tested, and refined in real working environments.
WP3 is responsible for testing human-centric improvements in real-world advanced technology settings. The aim is to pilot innovative solutions across seven key areas. These pilots will ensure that the technologies developed in the project are applied effectively in real workplaces and are aligned with the needs of both workers and organisations. The process starts by identifying human-centric challenges within each pilot and co-creating improvements with the workers involved.
WP3 then monitors and evaluates these changes to assess their effectiveness, while also creating feedback loops between workers and organisations. The pilots are systematically organised to compare insights and outcomes across different areas.
WP4 – Transversal Pilot analyses
WP4 focuses on analysing data from the pilots to identify common themes, challenges, and opportunities that can be applied across different workplace contexts and industries.
This work package examines several key areas:
• Cybersecurity and privacy
• Human trust in technology
• Impact of worker involvement in technology design
• Use of technology for in-work learning and skills development
WP4 systematically compares the pilots’ outcomes, creating feedback loops with WP3 to refine approaches and gather insights from ongoing stakeholder engagement.
The goal is to generalise findings at both the country and ecosystem levels, providing actionable recommendations for future technology development and deployment. This analysis will generate guidelines that ensure human-centric technology remains secure, trustworthy, and inclusive while supporting workers’ learning and skills.
WP5 – Human-centrism for strengthening industrial competitiveness
WP5 focuses on understanding how human-centric technology can improve industrial competitiveness across different pilots and innovation areas. By analysing how human-centric practices—such as better work organisation, skills development, and social relationships—impact productivity and competitiveness, WP5 provides valuable insights. The work includes econometric assessments at both the company and sectoral levels to identify how new workplace and learning environments can enhance resilience and competitiveness in EU industries.
WP5 also examines how human-centric practices affect employment and skills development, generating policy recommendations and feedback from stakeholders, including policymakers, industry leaders, and social partners. Additionally, WP5 addresses the need for new regulatory frameworks to support human-centric technologies, with discussions feeding into policy advice documents and potential revisions to standards. These activities run in parallel with the pilots, ensuring alignment with real-world data and outcomes.
WP6 – Outreach, ecosystem building and exploitation of results
Alongside the various work packages, a comprehensive communication strategy is implemented to raise awareness about the project’s outcomes, encourage their adoption by key stakeholders and maximise the project’s impact. This involves not only traditional dissemination efforts, such as reports and publications, but also active engagement through events like roadshows and innovation camps that bring together industry, policymakers, and researchers. In addition, the project ensures the protection of intellectual property, while creating sustainable business models and exploitation roadmaps to maximise the impact of the innovations developed. The ultimate goal is to foster an ecosystem where the project’s results can thrive and continue driving advancements in human-centric industries.
As we’ve seen, the success of SEISMEC relies on the seamless collaboration across its various work packages.
Each WP plays a crucial role in shaping a human-centric, innovative, and competitive industrial landscape, but it is their interconnection—linking theoretical frameworks, real-world pilots, and cross-cutting analyses—that drives the project forward.
By combining expertise from diverse fields and ensuring continuous feedback between stakeholders, SEISMEC is building a comprehensive pathway for Europe’s industries to thrive.
This journey, which spans across four years, is more than just technological advancements; it’s about creating sustainable, socially responsible solutions that empower workers and organisations alike. As SEISMEC progresses, the insights gained from each WP will continue to inform and enhance the others, ensuring a holistic approach to the future of human-centric industrial development.
Stay tuned for more updates as SEISMEC steadily continues its journey to pilot the shift towards human-centricity in European industry!
