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Dynamic positioning (DP) systems are complex systems that challenges the operator's mind during complex offshore DP operations. It is both mentally demanding and the operator has to maintain constant situation awareness to be able to react in time to safety-critical situations. The research design that will be presented in this work-in-progress paper, aims at investigating the variations of high and low mental workload during dynamic positioning operations in the maritime domain using advanced eye-tracking equipment. This type of equipment is utilized to assess the operator's focal areas on the vessel's bridge during the operation and correlate the eye-tracking results with more traditional metrics measuring mental workload, such as heart rate monitoring and NASA-TLX. The experiment has been divided into four different sub-experiments, where the last iteration will compare workload assessments between a current and a new graphical user interface of a DP system. The results from these experiments will give valuable insight in DP operations and provide possibilities of tailoring placement of information from the DP system so that safety can be improved by supporting the operator during operation.

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This paper describes the first steps of a research project directed towards human computer interaction (HCI) within the maritime environment and on maritime equipment. The focus is at this stage mainly on interaction with Dynamic Positioning Systems (DP) and how new interaction styles can be introduced to make the interaction more efficient and less faulty in both standard operations and in safety-critical situations. The initial experiment looks into how a DP operator can operate a DP system by using bi-manual interaction/multi-touch combined with hand-gestures to create a new type of user-experience. The aim for this research is to investigate which gestures feel natural to the DP operator and how/if they can be implemented into a real-life DP system.

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