HANSA 09-2022

SMM DIGITAL © AHO Work

SMM DIGITAL © AHO Work in progress introducing OpenBridge to AR technology guidance but few details for designers to easily interpret or implement in practice. For instance, in the IEC 62288 standard, contrast demands are defined as »sufficient contrast«, with no details or guidance on how to achieve this stated goal. OpenBridge counters this by appropriating web and mobile standards such as WCAG 2.0 and design patterns found in the leading, land-based design systems. These have been adapted to maritime-specific requirements such as day, night, and dusk and the need for optional physical interface redundancy. By applying these guidelines, user interfaces will help mitigate the effects of temporal impairments and, in general, improve the usability of the interfaces. This will help reduce accidents and increase efficiency. Lower innovation costs Modern user interfaces are much more detailed and advanced than previous generation systems. There are considerable resources needed to make a modern system, and for many companies, it might be very costly to develop and maintain such a system in-house. OpenBridge alone includes 760 user interface components with behaviour, not counting variations and colour files. There is also special competence needed to develop a state-of-the-art design system. This involves different usercentred design traditions such as interaction, graphic and industrial design, as well as human factors specialists and front-end engineers. In addition to this, it is important to involve a wide range of users in the development as well as regulatory bodies. Very few maritime companies have the available resources to carry out such processes alone at a comprehensive level as part of their software development. OpenBridge has met these challenges by applying open innovation processes supporting digital user interface development. First, the development has been led by experienced designers and researchers from Ocean industries concept lab, a leading design research group in Norway. This team has been supported by engineering competence from Sintef Ocean and human factors competence from the university of Southeast Norway. This group has been supported by an extensive network of industry and government partners that each has contributed to parts of the whole system. Furthermore, since OpenBridge is an open system, a very large group of industry actors have had direct access and the ability to contribute to its development. This has given OpenBridge quality control throughout its continued development, which is uncommon in the maritime industry. OpenBridge is not bound by regulatory ratification or a frozen guideline that is static and cannot further develop in a top-down approach, but instead driven by industry needs and thus much more dynamic and flexible compared to other approaches. As it continues to be developed, its quality will likely improve as more people get engaged in the development. Because of this process, it is likely that OpenBridge at least has equal or better rigour than existing maritime applications. And since it is decoupled from any specific product, it will continue to incrementally improve quality forward. As digital integration is mainstreamed in the maritime industry, more and more companies are seeing that using a standard baseline interface guideline is opening their ability to focus on the core functional offering of their product. Using an existing system will save significant costs and most likely increase 56 HANSA – International Maritime Journal 09 | 2022

SMM DIGITAL the quality of the resulting user interface, especially for companies without an entire design department. Ease of learning and skill transfers The lack of user interface standards in the maritime domain affects efficient training and familiarisation. The differences in how generic user interfaces are built in the maritime domain means that users need to learn different user interface philosophies for each equipment and combination of equipment that make up a single workplace (e.g., bridge). This challenge is largely mitigated by applying a common user interface design standard. The extreme realisation of this is seen in the aviation industry, where pilots are trained on particular aircraft models, and because of the design consistency across a particular Airbus or Boeing is identical, they can move between aircraft types. Moreover, if a user has encountered and learned how to use one OpenBridge interface, the knowledge of how to operate basic functionality can be transferred from one system to another. Buttons, alert handling, iconography, styles and many standard interaction patterns will be the same. This will allow the operator to focus on the system‘s core functions instead of learning a new interface philosophy. Requirements specification In modern software development and question, it is necessary to define usability requirements in the acquisition process to secure that the systems meet modern standards of user interface development. However, defining requirements that can be met within budget can be challenging in the maritime industry. Mainly because many system manufacturers do not have specialised humancentred design personnel or processes inhouse. Some of these challenges can be reduced by using OpenBridge in the acquisition or design process. Since Open- Bridge builds on state-of-the-art standards, a software following the guideline will follow the same standards too. That is not to say that all software that uses OpenBridge is well designed. However, they will at least meet a baseline of modern requirements so that the usability requirements can focus more on operational performance than contrast and readability. At the level of ship design, when the ship owner is developing the list of specifications for a new ship together with the ship designer, the ship owner can ask for OpenBridge compatible systems. It is then up to the ship designer to find the appropriate systems. This simplifies the establishment of the specifications and saves time for both the ship owner and the ship developer. Less cost of software development Ship owners are increasingly developing their own software related to their operations that are used on land The timekeeper of the seven seas Wempe - the leading manufacturer of master and slave clock systems for the maritime industry Hall B6 Booth B6.505 www.wempe-maritim.de HANSA – International Maritime Journal 09 | 2022 57