Development and Testing of a Ship Controller Interface - An Affective Engineering and Wayfaring Approach
Abstract
The ship bridge environment is complex and the task of navigating large vessels is a highlydemanding task. This leads to a large responsibility resting on the officers shoulders, thusdevelopers should aim to ease the crew members everyday working environment. In thisthesis, Affective Engineering is combined with a Wayfaring approach to help develop anew controller interface and test aspects of inflicting nature on the captain s attention andmental resources. This is done through a pilot experiment setup measuring cognitive loadof the user while interacting with a novel controller design. The new design proposed is amultifunction interface with dedicated input devices, substantially smaller than existingversions. Further statistical analysis of the recorded experimental data is performed,comparing the new design to one of old characteristics. The main intention with the workpresented is to serve as a pilot for further introduction of Affective Engineering in maritimeindustry development. The experiment showed some tendencies towards possible solutionsfor measuring aspects of cognitive load, control device interaction and concept evaluationof a novel controller interface.