Gaps Between Users and Designers: A Usability Study About a Tablet-Based Application Used on Ship Bridges

Assessing a maritime service website prototype in a ship bridge simulator: navigators’ experiences and perceptions of novel e-Navigation solutions

“…The expansion of technology is tied with the notion of societal progress and development (Bhardwaj 2013), and Information Technology (IT) service providers may naturally perceive that digitalization brings value to the maritime domain. Yet, it does not necessarily advance safety, especially if it continues to perpetuate the technology-driven mindset that has been reported to dominate IT applications in the sector (Man et al 2018). Safety enhancement may undoubtedly take advantage of cutting-edge technologies, but new maritime technology for the sake of mere novelty and modernization should not be developed and deployed without the fundamental acknowledgement of the human element and operator needs (Patraiko 2007;Patraiko et al 2010), especially in safety-critical work environments where the workers are not generally offered alternatives to the available systems (Jordan 1998).…”

“…There is no one optimal participant sample size that fits all usability tests, but in most cases the first five participants will already identify 80-85% of the usability issues (Lewis 2014;Turner et al 2006). It is essential that human factors specialists are involved in this process (Costa 2016;Grech et al 2008;ISO 2002;Man et al 2018) along with the developers and users.…”

“Are You Planning to Follow Your Route?” The Effect of Route Exchange on Decision Making, Trust, and Safety

“…S2SREX is a newly developed function and has not been subject to sufficient usability testing. User testing and feedback should be incorporated throughout the entire development lifecycle of the functions [22][23][24]57]. Poor usability, and "cluttered screens" caused by overlapping routes of different vessels and difficulties identifying which route belonged to which ship were mentioned by several participants throughout the simulations and during the semi-structured debriefs.…”

“…Unfortunately, the traditional culture of shipping is likely the cause for this lag in regulatory change, and has the potential to hinder the acceptance and exploitation of the benefits of automation and digitalization to the fullest extent [19]. Further, the projects and initiatives that have assessed various types of technology and automation within the maritime domain have had a primarily technology-centric approach to testing and implementation [22][23][24][25]. The approach, which largely disregarded the precepts of human-centered design likely led to the slow adoption of technology integration and acceptance.…”

Facing the New Technology Landscape in the Maritime Domain: Knowledge Mobilisation, Networks and Management in Human-Machine Collaboration

“…The maritime domain, which is one the most traditional and conservative of industries, is currently in the transition phase driven by this fastchanging technology landscape. Many digitalized products, applications and services have been introduced into the shipping industry to provide maritime users a plethora of platforms and decision support tools to access information and maintain system control [7], such as energy-efficient fuel monitoring systems [8], unmanned cargo handling systems in the world's largest automated terminal [9], autonomous unmanned ships [10][11][12], etc. Intelligent systems are constantly shifting the human operators' role.…”