Content uploaded by Sigrun Lurås
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Sigrun Lurås on Sep 28, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Systemic design in complex contexts : an enquiry through designing a ship's bridge
Abstract and Figures
In recent years designers seem to increasingly be engaged in projects for complex, high-risk domains. Yet, little research has been conducted that addresses how designers experience such projects, what kinds of challenges they face, and how they may manage these challenges. This thesis addresses the design in one such domain: the offshore ship industry. The presumptions for the thesis are that designing for such contexts is complex and that systemic design approaches may prove valuable. Systemic design is a recent initiative in design that integrates systems thinking and human-centred design, with the intention of helping designers cope with complex design projects. The aim of the thesis is to understand designing for complex, high-risk control environments, and how systemic design may be of help when designing for such contexts. This has been investigated through ‘research by design’ that addresses the design of a ship’s bridge, and by an interview study with industrial and interaction designers with experience in the maritime and offshore industries. Research by design is a research approach where design practise is at the core of research. The design practise of this thesis was carried out within the Ulstein Bridge Concept (UBC) design research project. The thesis confirms that designing for the offshore ship industry is complex and challenging on many fronts. First, the domain is unfamiliar to most designers, and acquiring the insights needed for designing requires substantial effort. Second, the products to be designed constitute highly advanced technology that is used in complex, uncertain, and high-risk situations. Third, the industry is global; it has many stakeholders and is highly regulated, both of which make the framework conditions for offshore-specific design projects difficult to grasp. In the thesis, systemic design is conceptualised by a systemic model of the design situation that makes explicit what designers need to make sense of in such projects. The operationalisation of systemic design was conducted within the UBC project and includes the development of two systemic design methods: design-driven field research at sea and layered scenario mapping. Further, the designs developed by UBC, the Ulstein Bridge Vision™, can serve as design exemplars resulting from systemic approaches. This is a thesis by publication, which consists of an exegesis (included as Part 1) and six publications (included as Part 2). The exegesis presents the research design and theoretical perspectives that are used, and includes an overarching reflection on the results of the thesis that binds the publications together.
Figures - uploaded by Sigrun Lurås
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Sigrun Lurås
Content may be subject to copyright.
... The data within this thesis were collected exclusively using high-fidelity simulators. Access to ship bridges for research studies is difficult because of cost, restricted access, and safety (Lurås, 2016b). High-fidelity simulation is as close as a researcher can get to a naturalistic setting for maritime research. ...
... Collaborative design is the process by which actors from different disciplines disseminate knowledge about the design process to achieve a shared understanding and use this collective understanding to create new products or designs (Kleinsmann et al., 2007). Systemic design is the integration of systems thinking and human-centred design to assist designers with complex design projects (e.g., a ship's bridge) (Lurås, 2016b). The adoption of these more collaborative, systemic, user-centred approaches in the maritime industry requires early bottom-up intervention, flexible and iterative processes involving an interdisciplinary team. ...
The maritime industry is undergoing a transformation driven by digitalization and connectivity. There is speculation that in the next two decades the maritime industry will witness changes far exceeding those experienced over the past 100 years. While change is inevitable in the maritime domain, technological developments do not guarantee navigational safety, efficiency, or improved seaway traffic management. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted the Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) concept to define autonomy on a scale from Degrees 1 through 4. Investigations into the impact of MASS on various aspects of the maritime sociotechnical system is currently ongoing by academic and industry stakeholders. However, the early adoption of MASS (Degree 1), which is classified as a crewed ship with decision support, remains largely unexplored. Decision support systems are intended to support operator decision-making and improve operator performance. In practice they can cause unintended changes throughout other elements of the maritime sociotechnical system. In the maritime industry, the human is seldom put first in technology design which paradoxically introduces human-automation challenges related to technology acceptance, use, trust, reliance, and risk. The co-existence of humans and automation, as it pertains to navigation and navigational assistance, is explored throughout this thesis.
The aims of this thesis are (1) to understand how decision support will impact navigation and navigational assistance from the operator’s perspective and (2) to explore a framework to help reduce the gaps between the design and use of decision support technologies. This thesis advocates for a human-centric approach to automation design and development while exploring the broader impacts upon the maritime sociotechnical system. This work considers three different projects and four individual data collection efforts during 2017-2022. This research took place in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Warsash, UK and includes data from 65 Bridge Officers (navigators) and 16 Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) operators. Two testbeds were used to conduct the research in several full mission bridge simulators, and a virtual reality environment. A mixed methods approach, with a heavier focus on qualitative data, was adopted to understand the research problem. Methodological tools included literature reviews, observations, questionnaires, ship maneuvering data, collective interviews, think-aloud protocol, and consultation with subject matter experts. The data analysis included thematic analysis, subject matter expert consultation, and descriptive statistics.
The results show that operators perceive that decision support will impact their work, but not necessarily as expected. The operators’ positive and negative perceptions are discussed within the frameworks of human-automation interaction, decision-making, and systems thinking. The results point towards gaps in work as it is intended to be done and work as it is done in the user’s context. A user-driven design framework is proposed which allows for a systematic, flexible, and iterative design process capable of testing new technologies while involving all stakeholders. These results have led to the identification of several research gaps in relation to the overall preparedness of the shipping industry to manage the evolution toward smarter ships. This thesis will discuss these findings and advocate for human-centered automation within the quickly evolving maritime industry.
... A systemic designer first takes a step backwards from 'design' to systems thinking, which involves perceiving, modelling, and intervening in the world as if it were composed of open, purposeful, complex wholes [19]. Subsequently, by moving a step forward from 'system-thinking' to design thinking in a normative, user-centred, and iterative manner, the application of the design can then be extended beyond symbols, objects, and interactions [57]. A practitioner or designer adopting a systemic approach, similar to a manager, must build, integrate, reconfigure, and manage a wide range of resources [58]. ...
Rural sustainability has emerged as a ‘wicked problem’ for practitioners within and outside design. Many efforts that adopted a systematic approach since the 1980s paved the road for addressing such a systemic problem. Moreover, stakeholders from the systemic design field have made significant strides by developing a systemic approach to rural systems since 2012 and implementing numerous localised design practices globally. Despite these efforts, the essence of systemic design for sustainable rural development remains relatively unclear because of its infancy. Therefore, this study tries to answer the question of “how does systemic design facilitate the sustainability transition of rural communities” by conducting field visits to two typical systemic design projects: Future Village Lab in rural China (Tieniu Village) and Systemic Design Lab in Italy (Ostana). Thereafter, drawing on insights from organisational management studies, this study pioneers a novel theoretical framework called ‘Situation-Cognition-Action’ to compare and analyse these two cases. The results highlight the role of systemic design in contributing to rural sustainability by enhancing the understanding of complex situations, fostering cognitive capacity, and creating a solution ecosystem for collaborative action. Finally, it elucidates how systemic design addresses three crucial trade-offs and effectively promotes rural sustainability in various rural contexts.
... To mitigate, considerable design and development efforts aiming to improve usability in ship bridge design have been performed [10,[30][31][32][33][34], also attempting to increase the understanding of the fundamental issues underlying the present situation The persistence of suboptimal usability has been connected to the multiple stakeholders being involved in the ship building and ship bridge design processes [35]. There may be differences in the level of knowledge of human factors and human-centred design posited by different stakeholders [36]. ...
... First, most safety-critical workplaces restrict thirdparty access, which makes the context and the users difficult to reach (Lurås and Mainsah 2013). Second, for most designers, the working context of a vessel-spanning offshore vessels to icebreaker vessels and coastguard vessels to fishing trawlers-is highly unfamiliar (Lurås 2016). Changing weather conditions and complex operations, constitutes an unpredictable and challenging workplace for the field researchers as well as the crew (Nordby and Lurås 2015). ...
Designing for professional, high-risk user contexts often implies limited accessibility for interaction designers to conduct field research and field testing, and the measures taken by most universities in Norway in 2020 to prevent COVID-19 spread have further contributed to the problem of achieving the contextual insight needed throughout the design process by severely restricting travel for research purposes. In this paper, we describe the use of virtual reality-reconstructed operation scenarios (VRROS) for Arctic-going vessels implemented in support of and as a substitute for the contextual aspects of fieldwork in the education of master’s students studying interaction design. The virtual reality rig contains three scenarios contextualizing ships’ bridges and their surroundings originally developed for research on designing navigation and operation applications using augmented reality technology. We evaluate whether aspects of the VRROS can substitute for real fieldwork by evaluating students’ use of the VRROS using a student questionnaire. Finally, we discuss the value and potential of using VRROS as a supplement and support when studying how to design for hard-to-reach contexts in the future.
... Collaborative design is the process by which actors from different disciplines disseminate knowledge about the design process to achieve a shared understanding and use this collective understanding to create new products or designs [22]. Systemic design is the integration of systems thinking and human-centered design to assist designers with complex design projects (e.g., a ship's bridge) [23]. An example of this combined successful approach in the maritime context is the Ulstein Bridge Concept design research project, which created an integrated redesign of a ship's bridge [24,25]. ...
Maritime user interfaces for ships’ bridges are highly dependent on the context in which they are used, and rich maritime context is difficult to recreate in the early stages of user-centered design processes. Operations in Arctic waters where crews are faced with extreme environmental conditions, technology limitations and a lack of accurate navigational information further increase this challenge. There is a lack of research supporting the user-centered design of workplaces for hazardous Arctic operations. To meet this challenge, this paper reports on the process of developing virtual reality-reconstructed operational scenarios to connect stakeholders, end-users, designers, and human factors specialists in a joint process. This paper explores how virtual reality-reconstructed operational scenarios can be used as a tool both for concept development and user testing. Three operational scenarios were developed, implemented in a full mission bridge simulator, recreated in virtual reality (VR), and finally tested on navigators (end-users). Qualitative data were captured throughout the design process and user-testing, resulting in a thematic analysis that identified common themes reflecting the experiences gained throughout this process. In conclusion, we argue that operational scenarios, rendered in immersive media such as VR, may be an important and reusable asset when supporting maritime design processes and in maritime training and education.
... In contrast, the twenty-first-century human-centred design focuses on such relationships by considering multiple levels of relationships between humans and systems, including human factors, activities, interactions, communications and meanings (Giacomin 2014). By bridging systems thinking and human-centred design, there is an opportunity to address the complexity of systems and the need for human-centred systems at one and the same time (Lurås 2016). ...
Emerging design is an approach to solving multidimensional and multidisciplinary problems. It describes design as an evolutionary activity with no projected steps, in which plans for taking steps and using tools gradually emerge from participants’ reflections. This study explores emerging design through a three-year activity that initially had a pedagogical nature but gradually turned into a practical and research-based activity in which design students along with small businesses and start-ups came up with a problem-based approach for defining and solving real-world problems. The three cycles of activity were studied with a reflective lens and various sources of data were used. The Engeström framework for activity theory was used to reduce and display data in qualitative data analysis. Through the three cycles of activity, few design proposals were implemented by the involved small businesses and start-ups. In addition, most businesses benefited from the research findings produced during the students’ projects. Some unexpected outcomes were also observed, including emergence of a collaborative network of experts and clients. The results suggest that first, the quality of collaboration among the participants was more important than instruments and rules for achieving the main objectives of the activity. Second, a reflective approach to design practice can continuously improve the design processes and tools used in each cycle of the activity, and third, design practice does not only produce design solutions, it also creates collaborations, reflections and networks.
... Advanced research on the development of AR in decision support systems is underway. The results so far include the concept of the T-Bridge system from Transas A.S [22], Ulstein Bridge Vision [23], ARBinocular [24], LookSea™ from ARvcop [25], OX Ship's Bridge from the consortium of Rolls-Royce and VTT [26] or Raymarine ClearCruiseAR [27]. ...
The preliminary research experiments described herein were aimed to choose an appropriate mixed reality technology for the construction of navigational information display method to be used onboard ships in restricted waters. The method assumes a possibly faithful representation of the environment and the actual navigational situation on a spatial decision support system (SDSS) interface during ship navigation and maneuvering in restricted waters. The paper also presents the architecture and process of building a SDSS, where the method of navigational information display using augmented virtuality was applied.
... Η τεχνολογία AR έχει ξεκινήσει να εφαρµόζεται σε πολλές εφαρµογές, καθώς µπορεί να παρέχει πληροφορίες πιο αποτελεσµατικά στους χρήστες [Luras 2016]. Για παράδειγµα η εταιρεία Ulstein σχεδιάζει συστήµατα πλοήγησης βασισµένα στην τεχνολογία AR όπως φαίνεται στην εικόνα 17. ...
Τα τελευταία χρόνια αυξάνονται διαρκώς οι επιχειρήσεις διαχείρισης κρίσεων στο θαλάσσιο χώρο, όπως π.χ. τα ναυτικά ατυχήµατα και οι συναφείς επιχειρήσεις Έρευνας & Διάσωσης. Για την αποτελεσµατικότερη διαχείριση των περιστατικών αυτών χρησιµοποιούνται µεταξύ άλλων και τα συστήµατα ηλεκτρονικών ναυτικών χαρτών ECS και ECDIS. Κρίσιµος παράγοντας επιτυχίας των επιχειρήσεων είναι η άµεση πρόσβαση σε όσο το δυνατό πιο ακριβή δεδοµένα για τις επικρατούσες συνθήκες στην περιοχή του περιστατικού. H δυνατότητα του νέου προτύπου ηλεκτρονικών ναυτικών χαρτών IHO S-100 για υποστήριξη πολλαπλών επιπέδων θαλάσσιων πληροφοριών (Marine Information Overlays-MIOs), εµπλουτίζει το περιεχόµενο που περιέχεται σε ένα ηλεκτρονικό ναυτικό χάρτη, καθώς δύναται να απεικονίζονται τόσο στατικές όσο και δυναµικές πληροφορίες, όπως παλίρροιες, ρεύµατα, επικρατούσες καιρικές συνθήκες, κινήσεις των παραπλεόντων πλοίων. Νέες εφαρµογές που κάνουν χρήση δεδοµένων της σειράς προτύπων S-100 είναι προ των πυλών, µε στόχο να πραγµατώσουν τη στρατηγική του ΙΜΟ για την ηλεκτρονική ναυσιπλοΐα (e-Navigation), µε την διαδραστική συνεργασία σταθµών συντονισµού στην στεριά και πλοίων εν πλω, για την αυτοµατοποιηµένη µετάδοση και χαρτογραφική απεικόνιση δεδοµένων στα συστήµατα ηλεκτρονικών ναυτικών χαρτών για γρήγορη λήψη αποφάσεων.
In recent years Search and Rescue (SAR) operations have been increased, as for instance the maritime accidents. For the efficient management of these incidents, electronic nautical chart systems are used. A critical success factor for the operations is the access to accurate data for the prevailing conditions around the incident area. The capability of the new IHO S-100 standard for electronic nautical charts to support Marine Information Overlays (MIOs) enrich the provided information, as it may include both static and dynamic information such as tides, currents, weather conditions as well as vessels traffic. New applications using data from the S-100 series of standards are at the forefront to implement the IMO's e-Navigation strategy with the interactive coordination of shore-based and ship stations for the automated transmission of data and drawing on electronic nautical chart systems for quick decision-making.
... Participatory design practices typically involve face-to-face interactions between multidisciplinary stakeholders for direct representation and communication where physical boundary objects (e.g. scale models, mockups, design sketching, etc.) and/or walk-through scenarios of the real work environment enable designers and users to discuss work issues related to design (Andersen & Broberg, 2015;Broberg, 2010;Lurås, 2016;Österman, Berlin & Bligård, 2016). The use of shared boundary objects such as physical objects and storytelling allows the involvement of non-designers in the design process (Strom, 2007) and facilitates knowledge management within a multidisciplinary project team or organization. ...
Naval architecture design procedures focus primarily on the technical aspects of engineering specifications, mission requirements and overall survivability of ships and marine structures. In contrast, often little attention or importance is placed on the operational demands of onboard crew and the detailed design characteristics of a ship’s work environment. However, the design and layout of a ship’s work environment influences how crew execute their tasks. Ship designs not optimized for crew and their work demands can contribute to decreased safety and efficiency, while increasing the physical demands of onboard operations. Inadequate design is a common causal factor of maritime accidents, and thus, should be addressed and mitigated during conceptual design development.
The aim of this thesis is to investigate and identify strategies that facilitate the implementation of user-centred design solutions during new ship development, and ultimately optimize the onboard work environment for crew. This thesis has a design-centred scope which explores and develops pragmatic methods and tools to improve knowledge mobilization and participatory design processes between multidisciplinary, geographically-distributed stakeholders involved in new ship development.
This research confirms that general arrangement drawings are an effective, pragmatic participatory platform that designers, users and ergonomists can utilize as a communication tool for early evaluation and design input. Visual representations of a ship’s structure and work environment facilitates storytelling and contextualizes highly specialized, tacit crew knowledge and experiences. This allows for design decision-making to be openly discussed, visualized and optimized through tangible, highly iterative processes and directly validated by subject-matter experts. Results from this research were used to develop the software prototype, E-SET, which uses digital general arrangement drawings and ship renderings as a participatory platform for crowdsourced evaluation and input. The prototype’s usability was tested by naval architecture graduate students, while the adoption of new technology and ergonomics applications in ship design projects was further investigated.
Ergonomics, as a discipline, must demonstrate tangible added value to traditional engineering design processes in order to motivate industry stakeholder buy-in. Ergonomics applications will be more likely utilized by naval architects and applied within the shipping industry if the tools and methodologies developed are not only usable and convenient, but produce measurable and cost-effective outcomes. However, before ergonomics is to make a meaningful and widespread impact within shipping the attitudes and cultural norms of the industry must evolve as a precondition for knowledge transfer to successfully occur.
Researchers and practitioners alike are in general agreement that the public sector is increasingly tasked with managing ‘complex problems’. Many authors have warned that the established practices in government are not sufficient to deal with such problems. The integration of systems thinking in design practice has been advocated as a promising approach to understand and more effectively deal with the increasing complexity of societal challenges. However, the literature on systemic design largely remains in the academic and theoretical discussions. In 2020, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has pioneered the development and implementation of systemic design as its approach to designing and delivering change. This article outlines practice insights into the ATO's systemic design framework, including its applications to a range of initiatives, including the stimulus measures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. It discusses early insights into considerations of implementing systemic design at scale. Future research should focus on the implementation factors that may enable or inhibit its successful adoption.
Ecological Interface Design delivers the techniques and examples that provide you with a foundation to succeed in designing advanced display graphics. The opening chapters introduce the “art” of interface design by exposing the analytical methods behind designs, the most common graphical forms, and how these methods and forms are pulled together to create a complete design. The book then incorporates case studies that further emphasize techniques and results. Each example exemplifies a solution to a certain part of the EID puzzle. Some of the examples demonstrate the analysis phase, while others apply more scrutiny to graphical design. Each is unique, allowing allowing you to use them in the development of your own designs. The volume concludes with an analysis that connects ecological interface design with other common interface design methods, enabling you to better understand how to combine approaches in the creation of design solutions.
