Welcome to 2013. I have probably said all of this in writing before,
but why not say it again? There is a small discussion on the
eNavigation linked in group. I worry that so many in the maritime
industry think ECDIS is a big wonderful thing and the true answer.
Ask yourself, "What if every mariner started with Google Glass as a
student and then had hands free navigation capabilities that followed
them. On the bridge, on the bridge wing, on the bow, or where ever
that mariner needed to be. That interface could completely shift as
the tasks change. Why do we use the same ECDIS when docking as
steaming across an entire ocean or dredging or retrieving scientific
gear from the sea floor with cm accuracy?
Rex, So, currently, it takes at least a 100 hours of active/indepth experience on a new interface to be any good at it and probably several hundred hours to be really good. And typically, most users have no idea really makes a good or bad interface beyond the little annoying things. Typical user studies can not take statistically significant number of users through multi-hundred hour time series across multiple different interface types and in different orders (what you learn first can stunt your learning of different interaction styles) Top that off with my experience with NOAA, I found that they explicitly ignored that medium to small mariners when creating nautical publications. I taught graduate students how to use the Linux command line last year to process data. I think they all hated me for the first 1-2 months of the class. The looks on many of the faces said "This professor is a stupid jerk." At the end of the semester, I got amazing positive feedback. It was only after I broke some long time pre-conceptions that I could physically see the students make it through to the understanding. I conclude from my observations and studies that we have no bloody clue what is a really good interface for any particular job on or related to ships. To see what I mean, give any 40+ year old (this includes me) an XBox controller and put them in Halo competing agains 8 other people. I did it... I had 12 years laughing at me and kicking my butt for a long long time. The tasks and awareness of multiple indicators is impressive. Only after a huge number of hours, can I hold my own and say that the interface feels extremely intuitive. And simple may or may not equal 2D for a particular job. Want a concrete example? Look at studies of current and wind flows (publications by Colin Ware and others). Put a dot on a wind barb map and test beginners to experts at rapidly judging where that dot will end up... the experts are better that the beginners, but the results are not overwhelmingly good. Then switch to a cognitively driven flow visualization and the results for beginners and experts jump way way up. e.g. see http://nowcoast.noaa.gov in the Oceanographic -> Surface Water Currents -> w/ Speed. Another example, compare training an new ECS system vrs the Whale Alert iPhone/iPad app. The first caused much confusion. The later won me comments like "Why are you bothering to train me? This is trivially easy." Please open your mind up to domain / task specific interfaces, 2D/3D/1D/table interface choices, and the maritime workers who have yet to enter the field.
Iteration is certain fine, but... Dear maritime community, please go forth and innovate. GPS and ECDIS are not the "new hotness." They are now in the old, slow moving work horse phase of their existances. Pick up an XBox, Wii, PS3, smart phone, and tablet and see what's out there. If you don't code, use paper and pencil... draw that radical new idea. I draw on real physical paper and white boards all the time and I'm a coder.
If you can, go take Stanford's ME 101: Visual Thinking class or something similar at a nearby school. Yeah, this class is near impossible to get in. I had to sleep out in line overnight as an undergrad to get in (at a school that typically doesn't have signups for classes, you just go). This will flip your concepts of interacting with the world upside down and inside out.
![]( "FlowVis @D in NOAA NOWCoast")
from Rex Kurt, I try to keep things simple. If the customer wants a 3D display, then we will develop a 3D display, but the only marine navigators who currently ask for a a 3D display are submariners (who can change the depth of their vessel). Surface ships are shackled to the sea surface and their navigators seem to prefer a 2D display. It keeps things simple and helps them analyse the (2D) problem and avoid collisions and groundings.There are so many things wrong out the current way things are done. Starting with ECDIS alarms and moving forward to an endless list.
Rex, So, currently, it takes at least a 100 hours of active/indepth experience on a new interface to be any good at it and probably several hundred hours to be really good. And typically, most users have no idea really makes a good or bad interface beyond the little annoying things. Typical user studies can not take statistically significant number of users through multi-hundred hour time series across multiple different interface types and in different orders (what you learn first can stunt your learning of different interaction styles) Top that off with my experience with NOAA, I found that they explicitly ignored that medium to small mariners when creating nautical publications. I taught graduate students how to use the Linux command line last year to process data. I think they all hated me for the first 1-2 months of the class. The looks on many of the faces said "This professor is a stupid jerk." At the end of the semester, I got amazing positive feedback. It was only after I broke some long time pre-conceptions that I could physically see the students make it through to the understanding. I conclude from my observations and studies that we have no bloody clue what is a really good interface for any particular job on or related to ships. To see what I mean, give any 40+ year old (this includes me) an XBox controller and put them in Halo competing agains 8 other people. I did it... I had 12 years laughing at me and kicking my butt for a long long time. The tasks and awareness of multiple indicators is impressive. Only after a huge number of hours, can I hold my own and say that the interface feels extremely intuitive. And simple may or may not equal 2D for a particular job. Want a concrete example? Look at studies of current and wind flows (publications by Colin Ware and others). Put a dot on a wind barb map and test beginners to experts at rapidly judging where that dot will end up... the experts are better that the beginners, but the results are not overwhelmingly good. Then switch to a cognitively driven flow visualization and the results for beginners and experts jump way way up. e.g. see http://nowcoast.noaa.gov in the Oceanographic -> Surface Water Currents -> w/ Speed. Another example, compare training an new ECS system vrs the Whale Alert iPhone/iPad app. The first caused much confusion. The later won me comments like "Why are you bothering to train me? This is trivially easy." Please open your mind up to domain / task specific interfaces, 2D/3D/1D/table interface choices, and the maritime workers who have yet to enter the field.
Iteration is certain fine, but... Dear maritime community, please go forth and innovate. GPS and ECDIS are not the "new hotness." They are now in the old, slow moving work horse phase of their existances. Pick up an XBox, Wii, PS3, smart phone, and tablet and see what's out there. If you don't code, use paper and pencil... draw that radical new idea. I draw on real physical paper and white boards all the time and I'm a coder.
If you can, go take Stanford's ME 101: Visual Thinking class or something similar at a nearby school. Yeah, this class is near impossible to get in. I had to sleep out in line overnight as an undergrad to get in (at a school that typically doesn't have signups for classes, you just go). This will flip your concepts of interacting with the world upside down and inside out.
