Incorporate good practice into ship design process; future ship designers meet end users

A good ship design is one that takes account of socio-technical requirements and challenges; it has to fulfil the fundamental requirements of the safety, efficiency, and usability of the entire ship system by keeping Human Factors (HF) in mind. Human Centred Design (HCD) is an approach which designers can use to apply HF and user involvement into ship design. Thus the ship designers' expertise on HCD is of paramount importance for a good ship design. This paper presents part of an ongoing research study to integrate HCD knowledge into the maritime design engineering education. A ‚Äö"Designers Meet Users" workshop was conducted with Bachelor of Engineering students at Australian Maritime College. A team of seven maritime field experts were present as end users to provide HF feedback to improve final year 'Design Projects' done by the students. Students facilitated a walkthrough of their designs to the field experts. Data collection included debriefing meeting with experts, student feedback, and researchers' observations. Field expert team highlighted the possible design alterations within the general arrangement and other layout drawing to make the designs more user friendly than its original, indicating that the students had little or no HF knowledge or experience. Thus it is needed to integrate HF/HCD knowledge into maritime design engineering education system in a more targeted engineering-oriented fashion.