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Sensemaking in Safety Critical and Complex Situations
When redesigning a ship bridge, the human computer interaction is an important
part of the holistic user experience. To be fully able to understand and support the
selected methodology, there are two additional standards that are important to lean
on: ISO 6385 ( ISO, 2004), which specifies the ergonomic principles intended as a
guide for the design of work systems and as an extension, and ISO 11064- 1–7, which
has special focus on the case of designing control centres, which a ship bridge can be
defined as. The combination of the two techniques, design thinking and the process
of user-centred design, is therefore beneficial in this case: as will be explained below
as a part of the design thinking process, a mixture of investigative and generative
methods to get an understanding of what the user needs. To gather requirements at
an early stage in an innovation project is challenging, as the requirements are unclear
and the user does not really know what is important. The user-centred design process
holds five different steps that includes:
1. Research phase –this stage typically consists of observation studies and
interviews.
2. Concept phase – try and fail with different concepts, including a pre-phase
of low fidelity prototyping using paper, cardboard and post-its.
3. Design phase – the low fidelity prototyping advances and develops into
more mature prototypes as in this case utilizing polystyrene, 3D-printed
prototypes, milled large scale plastic models a complete ship bridge setup
ready to be tested in a simulated environment.
4. Develop p hase – at this stage the product is ready to be materialized after
reducing the risk after iterating through the three previous stages. In this case,
building the first concept delivery at a workshop for the users to come and test
it before being installing on board the real vessel was a valued process.
5. Test p hase – the two first deliveries of the Unified Bridge were still called
prototypes, however already tested through several iterations. The last phase
was to test the concept in its real environment and evaluate it iteratively and
continuously to improve and gather feedback for later versions of both software and hardware.
The user-centred design process will then iterate and continue until you have a product that fulfils the initial design goals and general requirements as outlined in ISO
11064-1–7.
When comparing the user-centred design process and design thinking, it seems
similar and intertwined throughout the steps. Both are emphasizing with the end
users and both are putting focus on the end user. However, when looking closely, one
can distinguish that design thinking is a broader term and be applied to all products
and processes. The user-centred design process focuses more on the digital perspective. Design thinking has focus on innovation, ideation and finding user-focused solutions as a basis for building and developing products and solutions. The user-centred
design process is more focused on the actual creation of user-focused digital interfaces ( ISO 9241-210, 2019; Browne et al., 2008).
For the Unified Bridge development, both were important to incorporate as the
project and concept development had an important digital perspective with the
Sensemaking in Safety Critical and Complex Situations
When redesigning a ship bridge, the human computer interaction is an important
part of the holistic user experience. To be fully able to understand and support the
selected methodology, there are two additional standards that are important to lean
on: ISO 6385 ( ISO, 2004), which specifies the ergonomic principles intended as a
guide for the design of work systems and as an extension, and ISO 11064- 1–7, which
has special focus on the case of designing control centres, which a ship bridge can be
defined as. The combination of the two techniques, design thinking and the process
of user-centred design, is therefore beneficial in this case: as will be explained below
as a part of the design thinking process, a mixture of investigative and generative
methods to get an understanding of what the user needs. To gather requirements at
an early stage in an innovation project is challenging, as the requirements are unclear
and the user does not really know what is important. The user-centred design process
holds five different steps that includes:
1. Research phase –this stage typically consists of observation studies and
interviews.
2. Concept phase – try and fail with different concepts, including a pre-phase
of low fidelity prototyping using paper, cardboard and post-its.
3. Design phase – the low fidelity prototyping advances and develops into
more mature prototypes as in this case utilizing polystyrene, 3D-printed
prototypes, milled large scale plastic models a complete ship bridge setup
ready to be tested in a simulated environment.
4. Develop p hase – at this stage the product is ready to be materialized after
reducing the risk after iterating through the three previous stages. In this case,
building the first concept delivery at a workshop for the users to come and test
it before being installing on board the real vessel was a valued process.
5. Test p hase – the two first deliveries of the Unified Bridge were still called
prototypes, however already tested through several iterations. The last phase
was to test the concept in its real environment and evaluate it iteratively and
continuously to improve and gather feedback for later versions of both software and hardware.
The user-centred design process will then iterate and continue until you have a product that fulfils the initial design goals and general requirements as outlined in ISO
11064-1–7.
When comparing the user-centred design process and design thinking, it seems
similar and intertwined throughout the steps. Both are emphasizing with the end
users and both are putting focus on the end user. However, when looking closely, one
can distinguish that design thinking is a broader term and be applied to all products
and processes. The user-centred design process focuses more on the digital perspective. Design thinking has focus on innovation, ideation and finding user-focused solutions as a basis for building and developing products and solutions. The user-centred
design process is more focused on the actual creation of user-focused digital interfaces ( ISO 9241-210, 2019; Browne et al., 2008).
For the Unified Bridge development, both were important to incorporate as the
project and concept development had an important digital perspective with the