Human-Centered Ocean Industry: Design as a problem-solving tool.

The journey ahead will be exciting, and it is an excellent opportunity for us to learn and work together to shape the ocean industry. With a rich history of maritime trade, fishing, and aquaculture spanning over three thousand years, it is time to ensure the industry focuses on people's needs and adequately mitigates and accounts for externalities that affect our health, welfare, and happiness.?

Now is our chance to make sure the industry evolves in a way that meets the needs of everyone involved. Let's work together to make sure that happens!

Saul Bass' quote, "Design is thinking made visual,"

Captures the essence of design in its most basic form. But design has become a more profound discipline than just making it visual. Design is more a practice used to shape how people perceive products, services, and businesses, how they interact with them, and how they feel when they use them. Now design is used to create cohesive experiences, products, and even (I hope) entire industries.

"The evolution from design to design thinking is the story of the evolution from the creation of products to the analysis of the relationship between people and products, and from there to the relationship between people and people." ― Tim Brown,?Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

Design is a holistic practice considering aesthetic, functional, contextual, cultural, and societal considerations. As such, it requires a great deal of thought and planning. According to Jeanne Liedtka, there are four ways to explore during the design process: what is, what if, what wows, and what works. By understanding these four vantage points, we can better understand how design shapes our environment and the experiences we have within it.

Design is a powerful tool and has the potential to create a better world for all of us. We can create meaningful experiences that benefit us through thoughtful and intentional design.

It was interesting talking with Paal Holter on day three about how the industry can shift from an engineering mindset to an exploratory one.?To face the challenges of industry transformation required for all to have a healthy and safe future, we cannot just optimize our practices today - we must experiment and invent the future methods of ocean industry business models.?It was also interesting that developmental clusters were pointed out as one way to demo new business models and test innovation in ecosystem development among the many interdependent companies and sectors in today's ocean space.

I agree wholeheartedly that the ocean industry must shift from an engineering mindset to an exploratory one to face the challenges of industry transformation. Developing clusters is a great way to demonstrate new business models and test innovation in ecosystem development. It allows for collaboration between interdependent companies and sectors and enables us to create something new and innovative. Using clusters is a great way to progress in the ocean industry and is an essential step in the transformation process.

I should empathize with the humans in and near the loop at every step. I.e., not just the system operator or user but those that rely on their output and the wider chain. In maritime transport, it would include those on the vessel, the shore office, the ports, the agent, the suppliers, etc.

"Whether we're communicating with a human or a machine, the goal is to create a shared understanding of the world. That's the point behind both the rules governing polite conversation and how a user-friendly machine should work." ... "You have to know why people behave as they do—and design around their foibles and limitations rather than some ideal."― Cliff Kuang ,?User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play

What about systems engineering as a problem-solving tool - could that be used to create a human-centered industry? I see systems engineering as an essential partner with design practices, but at times it is too narrow in looking at solving defined problems - not at defining the problem itself.?

"Systems engineering is a systematic, multi-disciplinary approach to the design, realization, technical management, operations, and retirement of a system. A "system" is the combination of elements that function together to produce the capability required to meet a need. The elements include all hardware, software, equipment, facilities, personnel, processes, and procedures needed for this purpose; that is, all things required to produce system-level results." ... "The systems engineer usually plays the key role in leading the development of the concept of operations (ConOps) and resulting system architecture, defining boundaries, defining and allocating requirements, evaluating design tradeoffs, balancing technical risk between systems, defining and assessing interfaces, and providing oversight of verification and validation activities, as well as many other tasks. "- NASA.

Requirements = problem mitigation and assumptions of what is known and possible. Systems engineering fundamentally differs from design processes, where many unknowns cannot be controlled for without experimentation that exists and circles back in design processes - systems engineering is a great practice. Still, it leaves out critical success criteria that center around the stakeholders' experiences and, at times, emotions.?

In great designs, the emotions and feelings of the people involved are a central part of the process. Systems engineering is a process of problem-solving that focuses on developing and managing systems. It involves understanding the needs of the stakeholders, identifying the requirements, and designing a system to meet those requirements.?

Under systems engineering, the design of a control room, for example, includes:

• The concept of operations
• Task flow analysis
• the ergonomic requirements of the workspace
• the human factors requirements for the mitigation of accidents
• And many other considerations are ensuring that the tasks and expected workflows are appropriately divided and automated to ensure the workload is safe and manageable.

What could be covered under design processes that are not covered under systems engineering would be the need to take the possible feelings of the operators into account. For example, a design goal in addition to requirements identified in systems engineering processes could be for the operators to feel calm and trust their situational awareness. Calmness and trust are not easy requirements to test for, but they are essential qualifiers that can be improved in a circular design process.

Many people may react to feelings in the context of work and engineering, and problem-solving. But it is an essential success criterion when designing industrial environments and business models. We like to think we act entirely rationally, but that is untrue. We are highly influenced in our behavior by our emotions. Feelings of frustration, irritation, and stress can cause undue reactions that can create errors that lead to future mistakes and sometimes severe accidents - because the engineering team or the requirements in the order did not consider the human response to feelings in the design process.?

How might the operator feel if... This alarm goes off frequently… they must continually collect information from many screens and menus in a complex workflow to fill in a tracking form… etc.

When I helped to write the two SIGTTO books for the human element committee in 2019 and 2020, I didn’t have as much knowledge or experience in human center design practices as I do now. If I could go back, I would have spent some focused time recommending that the operators' emotional and physical states are explicitly pointed out as important factors for designing safe control room environments beyond the recommendations from ISO 11064.

One of the most significant roles in my day job is working to transform and embed human-centered design in everything we do. How can we utilize the power of human-centered design to provide more value to our users, customers, and stakeholders?

There were some interesting studies out of McKinsey that I want to point out, showing that companies that had higher levels of design maturity in their business practices have better results for shareholders.

"Top-quartile MDI scorers increased their revenues and total returns to shareholders (TRS) substantially faster than their industry counterparts did over five years—32 percentage points higher revenue growth and 56 percentage points higher TRS growth for the period as a whole." -?https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-design/our-insights/the-business-value-of-design

"Despite that finding, many companies are nowhere near mature in their design practices with over 40 percent of the companies surveyed still aren't talking to their end users during development." -?https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-design/our-insights/the-business-value-of-design

In the Ocean industries, I would bet that more than 60 percent are not spending time with their end users when creating and designing new solutions.

One way I am working to improve design maturity is to focus on welcoming a diversity of people, ideas, thoughts, and perspectives from customers, users, colleagues, and acquaintances to create great solutions. At the same time, it is easier to work alongside a team where we are all alike and agree (because it feels great to work with people who agree with us and confirm our ideas). It is worth the challenge of working and taking the time to consider and hold other views with people who disagree with us. People who challenge our ideas and assumptions about how the world works, if we are solving the correct problems, asking the right questions, and centering our work on the right stakeholders, are the most valuable interactions we can have.

When we disagree, we are allowed to learn. Only then can we change something and improve the quality of our ideas, refining them through discussion and testing. If we go through the process of disagreement and refinement productively with a diverse team, we are far more likely to reach breakthroughs.?

"The faster we make our ideas tangible, the sooner we will be able to evaluate them, refine them, and zero in on the best solution." ― Tim Brown ,?Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

Once we have a great team, we need to start prototyping, hypothesizing, and testing as soon as possible to clarify thoughts and assumptions and begin a cycle of improvement as early as possible. Then we can start the journey of innovation.

"Effectively driving growth through design innovation requires companies to evolve many of the assets and capabilities already in place and adopt significantly different and new ways of working."- Ewan Duncan , Mckinsey https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-design/how-we-help-clients/design-at-scale?

"Real innovation changes the course of industries or even society. The light bulb, the microwave oven, the fax machine, and iTunes. These are true innovations that changed how we conduct business, altered how we live our lives, and, in the case of iTunes, challenged the industry to reevaluate its business model completely." Connected Strategy: Building Continuous Customer Relationships for Competitive Advantage, Nicolaj Siggelkow & Christian Terwiesch https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42940474-connected-strategy?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_13?

This small project can catalyze real innovation in the Ocean Industry, where environmental and social strategies are embedded in our governance models and in everything we do to create value now and in the future.

Business objectives should be viewed from a long-term perspective to ensure that everyone involved benefits from the outcomes. This can be achieved by considering the objectives as a cluster, with each element being weighed against the others to reach a mutually beneficial resolution. By understanding the potential tradeoffs for each involved party, it will be possible to develop a win-win situation that will benefit all stakeholders in the long term.

On top of running a financially sustained business, we have a humanistic imperative to ensure climate stability and preserve and restore our environment's quality in air, land, and sea. Without the physical strength, our planet could afford us, none of the business ventures we make will build and maintain value over time for ourselves, our children, and future generations.

While there are many arguments that the SDGs are not perfect and that ESGs are hard to measure, we should consider them as background criteria as we open up to look at the shape of our industry today in part 2. Some of the SDGs that are relevant to discuss going forward are:

• GOAL 5: GENDER EQUALITY
• GOAL 7: AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGY
• GOAL 8: DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
• GOAL 9: INDUSTRY, INNOVATION, AND INFRASTRUCTURE
• GOAL 11: SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES
• GOAL 12: RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION
• GOAL 13: CLIMATE ACTION
• GOAL 15: LIFE ON LAND
• GOAL 17: PARTNERSHIP FOR THE GOALS

Whether it be through the use of clusters of industry players to meet and deliver on ESGs (Environmental, Social, and Governance standards) by moving to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the collaboration between industry players is critical to leveraging our collective knowledge, resources, and skills to find innovative ways to build our future. Additionally, such collaborations can create new revenue streams and cost savings, helping businesses become more competitive and sustainable.

There is an opportunity for business clusters to work together on safe spaces for new models of ocean business innovation. Especially when we face the challenges that require many players in the value chain to make new tradeoffs and let go of contractual models of shipping that have been in place for hundreds of years.

It will be essential in this project to get a hold of the different people and the difficulties they experience in their work and how it fits into the big picture.?This is a significant undertaking, and as Parkinson's law states, "work expands to fill the time available for its completion." I have set up a framework for the conversations to come on the industry as it exists and to examine the stakeholder map and their particular needs and pain points.?

It is helpful to think of this project as a 100-day workshop where we bring problems, ideas, and possibilities together to create the right environment for innovation to take hold. To examine how we might create and test human-centered innovation in workflows, business design, and the design of integrated industries by enabling spaces for experimentation.?

I am looking forward to the next step in our collaborative journey.?

The subsequent full write-up will come at the end of part two: UNDERSTANDING THE SHAPE AND SEGMENTS OF THE OCEAN INDUSTRY TODAY.

You can find the recap of part 1 here, complete with the text and daily videos: https://www.jaquelynburton.com/part-1-design-as-a-problem-solving-tool