Intelligent Harbor

Challenge

Our client Rolls-Royce Marine has been developing new solutions for harbors, to increase the situational awareness on shore. It was our task to help imagine and visualize ways that would support such vision by developing a user interface that would provide dynamic data in an attractive and accessible way. 

In collaboration with Nina Lukin and Izzan Soedarsono for Experience Driven Design 2018 at Aalto University, Finland.

Approach

The inspiration for this ambitious project comes from ‘Ship situational awareness’, a product which Rolls-Royce Marine developed previously. As we learned, situational or intelligent awareness refers to the perception of elements and surroundings around us. On a higher level, such awareness means knowing what is happening and being aware of the status of systems, especially in case something changes constantly. As any harbor environment is highly complex with dozens of operations happening simultaneously, building such awareness is crucial.

Our work was focused around the Vuosaari Harbor, which is one of the harbors managed by the Port of Helsinki. Working closely with the harbor allowed us to understand the complexity of the daily operations that underlie such a lively ecosystem. The 7-week project plan followed the double diamond design framework. We used a number of methods in the design process, as listed below.

In the context study phase, we grew a thorough understanding of the harbor environment and the information flows by conducting interviews and desktop research. We became familiar with the harbor stakeholders, vessel and cargo processes, work flows, information systems, and working culture. We learned about the different data forms and sources, and how they might be used in combination. In the process of sense-making, we found the harbor map to be a useful tool in that it helped us localize the 3 main operators working in the harbor. Furthermore, it helped us understand where each operation takes place and how the different phases of cargo shipping and handling depend on each other. It became apparent that all these complex processes are interconnected.

We analyzed and synthesized all collected data primarily through the method of affinity mapping. The found insights not only supported the importance of introducing new technologies to the harbor environment, but they also clarified the weak points and revealed opportunities to design for more enjoyable experiences. Pinpointing emotions of the harbor stakeholders was crucial, as understanding how people feel and why they feel this way informed which experience goals to design with. Lastly, the gained insights fed into the user persona and the case scenario. Having the vision of our client aligned with the room for an innovative design solution driven by strong experience goals carried us into the stages of ideation and prototyping.

Based on “How might we..?” questions we sketched ideas and possible solutions to the UI. We started paper-prototyping in order to gain an understanding of the information architecture as well as of the interactions that would support the final UI. An early digital prototype in low fidelity with some clickable functions was used for the user testing and the evaluation of experience goals. The evaluations indicated that our experience goals were met in the UI design as intended, and valuable feedback was incorporated into the development of the final UI prototype. The final product, a high fidelity interactive prototype, enables the user to access a variety of data such as vessel and truck schedules, 2D, 360° and lidar modes, as well as the weather forecast.