Products, interactions, systems, (furniture and interior design, architecture).
Context: Ulstein Bridge Concept (UBV) is a collaborative project with participation from AHO, Ulstein Group, Kwant Controls, University College of Ålesund (HiALS) and the Norwegian Design Council.
Goal: The complexity in modern high end ship building has increased on several fronts. This is especially true for the type of ships we are talking of in this research project, ships for very complex off shore operations. Very complex offshore operations demand visualizations of complex information to the officers on the bridge and facilitate fast and reliable control. Central topics are safety, human -computer interaction and usability and how these are interlinked.
On the other hand the production processes for ship building industries are extremely complex and typically the economic structure and mode of operation causes that to a large degree innovation, development and design is done within the framework of contracted projects and in collaboration with advanced customers. This results to a large degree in one-off solutions. For the control environment of the bridge the situation is complicated because of the many subcontractors with different interfaces that need to be coordinated. As a result the typical modern bridge environment is a compromise and does not render the ideal or optimal workstation for the operators.
It is with the increasing complexity of both production and operation now very crucial to address theses topics and to develop more strategic, innovation driven and user driven processes.
The project intends to develop new innovation processes for advanced ship bridge design. The project brings together the advanced company Ulstein Power and Control (UPC) and the company Kwant Controls with the research environments at Oslo School of Architecture (AHO) and Ålesund University College (HiALS). This is a specially promising composition of industry, design and engineering knowledge that are both very well rooted in the maritime sector and that have the potential to bring new thinking to the sector. The processes will be demonstrated in a pilot delivery.
This project will put UPC in front of radical ship design and support Ulstein's image of "Turning visions into reality".
Central research questions:
- To develop further the vision of the future ship bridges for Ulstein Power and Control taking in account the very complex challenges on operation and usability and exploiting the possibilities given by new technology.
- To develop design centred knowledge and processes that are especially tailored for very complex innovation activities in the ship building industries.
The secondary goals the project intends to fulfill are:
To improving design research and design education to be more adequately for the ship industry. To develop further the principles of the Concept Bridge.
To make bridge environment that satisfy the ideas behind the maritime rules and regulations rather than the exact written words To improve safety through more focuse on usability To improve ergonomics in terms of ship maneouvering and control To improve safety and control by reducing ambiguities and emphasizing simplicity To devise and proprose standards that improve inter-ship familiarity.
Analytical frames: Systems Oriented Design, Research by Design, Activity theory, design theory.
Methods: UBC builds on the experience gained form the highly successful UBV pilot project funded by the Norwegian Design Council. UBV conducted a design driven inquiry which drew inspiration from conceptual processes often used inside other domains, like the car industry. There multidisciplinary teams collaborate in making highly detailed future concepts that exemplify what may be made, so as to provide tangible results useful for developing long term strategies. This approach will be developed further but now driven forward by series of full size working mock-ups on different technologies and concepts. The complexity of interrelating the different parts technologies and actors will be theme for special attention through the research into Systems Oriented Design application.Human factors and operational security aspects will be especially investigated. The project seeks to build field tests on ships in operation
Deliverables: Doctoral thesis on Systems Oriented Design (AHO). Doctoral thesis on human factors in the sector (HiALS / AHO)
6 conference or journal papers .
Duration: Phase One: 1 April 2011- may 2013.
Funding: Norwegian Research Council