Increasing Safety of Demanding Offshore Operations through Usability

Autumn 2013 the eye-tracking study was extended with more participants and a comparison between novice and expert operators were carried out. The results gave a clear indication of which focal points were important during a platform supply DP operation and results were directly used in Rolls-Royce?s composition of consoles and equipment for the new Rolls-Royce Unified Bridge. In addition more conceptual design work was carried out to extend the usage of project results. A paper with title, Towards an Understanding of Operator Focus using Eye?tracking in Safety?Critical Maritime Settings, was accepted to be published at the Royal Institute of Naval Architects conference, Human Factors in Ship Design and Operation in February 2014. Our partners from University of Strathclyde visits and give post-study help with analysing the data collected from the eye-tracking study. The analysis was completed in January 2014. In addition, Rolls-Royce software developers started developing maritime software applications using the graphical user interface prototypes developed by interaction designers. The results from the innovation project got review in the magazine, The Maritime Executive (title of article: All the ?Nice to Have? Bridge Features by Wendy Laursen), where its impact on the Rolls-Royce Unified Bridge was highlighted. As a spin off to the integrated bridge research and the Rolls-Royce Unified Bridge, a small investigation on tactile interfaces for alarm systems were investigated the latter end of the project. The paper ?Towards Tactile Alarms Systems for Increased Awareness in Smart Environments? were published at the IARIA conference in Paris in July 2014. The paper described a wearable tactile device application for smart alarm systems. Where it was hypothesized that tactile alarms can decrease user resistance and deliver more focused awareness with directional hints. The prototype of a wearable tactile belt was described and its future improvements was analyzed. With this the five last milestones were met. A last study comparing old vs. new graphical user interfaces has been planned, however had to be postponed due to that software applications could not be finalised in time for the end of the project in June 2014. This study will be carried out during autumn 2014. The Rolls-Royce Unified Bridge project has been nominated to an internal Rolls-Royce award , ?Trusted to Deliver Excellence Awards?. The award recognizes people and teams who can be trusted to deliver excellence, who demonstrate customer focus, who are innovative in their approach, and who contribute towards the profitable growth of Rolls-Royce. This award announces the best project in Rolls-Royce plc (across divisions), where 500 projects have competed and 19 projects have reached the final round. This is a pleasant recognition of the research done that has founded the base of this project.

To increase safety of demanding offshore operations through focusing on usability and the human factor (HF) propose many challenges. The research community is small, however by adding focus from industry to this area by actually considering the operator's work situation and provide supportive solutions, one has come many steps closer to a safer safety critical operation. When developing solutions that reduce the human error rate, the equipment must be tested and statistical measurements from the tests com pared. By establishing the first maritime usability laboratory in the middle of the maritime cluster in Norway, it is possible to collect the data needed for the next generation of HF and usability tested equipment. This will be a major benefit for Rolls- Royce, who has this area as one of the priority areas of the future. By being inspired from other safety critical industries (nuclear, aviation and car), this project is in the interdisciplinary nature and requires expertise from most areas of the maritim e cluster. The R&D challenges that this project faces is to draw information out of the many disciplines researched, to establish a solid usability testing laboratory that supports collection of large amount of data for statistical processing, to find the suited selection of tools for quantitative and qualitative data analysis and methods to reduce the operator's stress-level during a demanding offshore operation. This project will have a key role in developing the maritime usability research community an d the results from this research will be utilised by Rolls-Royce to build a solid base for the development of the next generation of operator stations, equipment and software for vessels carrying out complex offshore operations.