Keywords

1 Introduction

Maritime Technology, as defined by WEGMT (Western European Graduate Education in Maritime Technology), focuses on the “safe use, exploitation, protection of, and intervention in, the maritime environment” [1]. It is anticipated that engineering knowledge will be used to manage safety in offshore operations with the support of computer systems [2]. Despite recent advances in technology, the humans in cooperative operations still have a significant impact on the computer systems used [3], and this is particularly true of maritime technology.

In the maritime domain, the design of machinery with its integrated computer systems involves engineers rather than designers from the fields of informatics and the other design disciplines [4]. Although engineers can offer brilliant machine systems with the necessary functionalities, the understanding of how a system should look [5] is seldom able to satisfy the user’s expectations of machine use as it relates to safety operations. It therefore remains a challenge to include the perceptions of humans into the development of maritime products. Investigations in other research fields have illustrated that a purely engineering understanding of a system in use is generally unsatisfactory due to its inadequate awareness of cooperative systems [6, 7].

Designing cooperative systems is not new. However, using a theoretical analysis to inform design is not enough because it is hard (for example, for maritime engineers) to deploy this without a professional informatics background [8]. Cooperative work, with its supported systems, is very different from the engineering field where tasks can be accomplished by solo machines. Maritime technology is a complex and interactive environment where humans’ activities are combined with machinery to create a social technical system [9]. It may erroneous to understand maritime technology as being solely about control and automatic systems [10]. Humans and their activities affect the computer systems in use. Thus, cooperative systems must acknowledge the interactive relations among and between humans and their support by the computer systems, and the combination of these factors in the material environment [11]. This is crucial and fundamental to the design of cooperative systems aimed at safety operations in maritime technology. In this article, we present how the knowledge transfer technique could help to combine the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions to promote a picture for designing cooperative systems.

2 Knowledge Transfer Technique

KTT is based on a theoretical analysis of cooperative systems—known as awareness in actor-network theory [10]. It is central to note that in this article awareness refers to the human’s awareness of activities and work procedures rather than the mental process of acquiring information and humans’ awareness of their world [10]. This is fundamentally different from Endsley’s concept of situation awareness and user supported design in engineering [12]. From the CSCW point of view, awareness in cooperative settings is used to describe how the individual monitors and perceives information that is available from their colleagues and from the surrounding material environment in which they are functioning [13]. It involves the processing of pre-known knowledge to reflect any issues related to design in the material environment [10]. Awareness is not subject to design; however, we can use computer systems to support it. KTT is based on this philosophy and customizes actor network theory (ANT) [14] to explore a critical approach to thinking for designers against an engineering field.

Awareness in KTT is defined under three categorizes [15]: self-awareness, we-awareness, and group-awareness. Self-awareness is explained as occurring when an operator is the focus of his own attention, or when he becomes aware of himself acting on his work. For example, an operator may wonder whether his work influences other operators [15] and could be monitored and understood by his colleagues. Self-awareness happens when an operator tries to reduce the discrepancy between his standard activity and his outcome expectations. We-awareness refers to the extent to which collaborative activity in the material environments depends on the participants’ ability to remain sensitive to each other’s conduct whilst engaged in their own distinct activity [16]. Group-awareness is a specific task procedure in which a group of operators work cooperatively on subtasks. During the group-awareness procedure, self and we awareness are allied in subtasks, and may occur in relationship to one another, while the group may be involved in different operations simultaneously.

Awareness alone could not adequately represent the interactive relationships occurring when humans are involved in maritime technology in actual use. In order to understand the interactive relations in a material environment, we have to understand how humans, computer systems, and the physical environment are connected and how they interact. ANT is a useful tool for analyzing social-technical environments, and deals with objects as part of an interactive network [14]. Researchers state that in order to make a social technical system readable and visible, it is essential to visualize the actor network [10, 17, 18]. Figure 1 shows the procedure by which information is processed (see Fig. 1). This is an iterative process that integrates cooperative work and social interactions together with technological systems to create a social-technical system.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Framework for designing a cooperative system

Full size image

Maritime technology is complex. Hence, a maritime operation may involve more than one task and many subtasks [19, 20]. People sometimes misunderstand fieldwork [21] and that has resulted in a failure to categorize the types of awareness. In addition, the configuration of awareness in ANT is a process that deploys different types of awareness. Interactive relationships can establish a network where different actors are connected toward the accomplishment of a specific task. Hence, the connected actors in a network can be portrayed as a visualized actor network. Schoffelen et al. [17] argue that visualized actors can be read as things to be included in design. In addition, humans may practice cooperative systems with different objectives. This opens up the dynamic capabilities of actors in an actor-network to function in cooperative systems. Hence, the IT designer has to iteratively categorize awareness until humans and their interactive relations can be interpreted into an operating technical system via the visualized actor network [17].

3 An Empirical Case

An offshore supply vessel has to execute four offshore tasks simultaneously with two systems (Integrated Automatic Systems (IAS) and Dynamic Positioning System (DP)): providing and retrieving water, providing mud, uploading and reclaiming cargoes, and exercising its dynamic positioning operations. Two officers work on these offshore services. The chief officer first checks which crane is available for use, and then turns from the dynamic positioning operation checklist to the workload checklist. From this checklist, the chief officer can see which cargo needs to be uploaded to the platform and which cargo should be taken back from the platform (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Crane information on oil platform and cargo plan. (Color figure online)

Full size image

In Fig. 2, different colors on the cargo plan mean that the vessel has different tasks at different platforms. At the same time, the first officer uses a communication channel to contact the platform and request it to put down pipes for providing and retrieving water and mud. Deck crews help to connect the pipes to the vessel. After these activities, the first officer starts his operations involving the water and mud tasks. The chief officer starts to monitor the cargo operations and records the cargo information on the paper. In addition, the chief officer shares this information verbally with the first officer. Simultaneously, the deck crews and the crew on the oil platform also assist the first officer via the communication channels. While interacting with the IAS, the first officer is concerned with safety issues, so all operation information is important to him.

IAS involves the integration of four individual systems: the liquid mud system, the stripping system, the tank cleaning system, and the bulk handling system. These four systems each have just two displays to show all their information. Hence, the first officer has to shift between screens based on his needs. Every time a cargo is uploaded to the platform or reclaimed from the platform, the chief officer records this information on the checklist and tells the first officer the weight of the cargo based on the number marked on it. The first officer also obtains information about the cargo’s position on the deck as reported by the deck crew via the communication device.

The IAS can show only limited information about the speed at which water is piped, and about the amount of water and mud; furthermore, the first officer does not know which container has the water or mud because the onshore crew usually does not share this information immediately. When the first officer is doing his job, he therefore has limited information about which side of the vessel has the water and which the mud. Due to this, there is a risk that the vessel may roll over due to an imbalance, exacerbated by the sea waves and wind. In addition, the tons of cargo being loaded up and down from the oil platform make this risk more unpredictable. Furthermore, there is no alarm system for such an imbalance issue. The alarm system is used only for identifying if the vessel is too close to something, such as the platform or the coastline. Inside the vessel, there is another alarm system for tank cleaning, which is used to indicate if the container is too full of water or mud. It is also important to know that first officer has to maintain the dynamic positioning system. This becomes necessary when sea waves change the vessel’s position making it unsuitable for delivery of the offshore services.

4 KTT-Based Systems Engineering

Self-, we, and group-awareness are grounded and intertwined in this offshore service. The actors have to make sure that their activities are visible to one another and are communicated to the other actors — the first and chief officers, the deck crew and platform—via communication channels. They need to ensure that their activities can be “heard” and observed [16]. For example, the first and chief officers transmit their communications to other actors (whether humans or machines) in different locations on the vessel or on the platform. Simultaneously, the computer systems are involved in these transmission processes through the actions of their operators who interact with the computer systems to communicate important information. This back and forth communication in the offshore service involves interactive relationships where different actors participate through practicing their role in the operation and thereby create an actor network facilitating a successful operation. In the offshore services, the actors in such an operation network are the platform, the first officer, the chief officer, the deck crew, and the supported computer systems.

Awareness happens during the activities when officers are working on their own tasks and task procedures. For instance: (1) The first and chief officers are aware of the position of the vessel and whether it is correctly positioned. The checklist and form preparation work have to be completed in a self-aware manner. The platform needs to know information when cooperating with the bridge. This is very important for the offshore services. (2) The deck crew also has to be involved in the offshore services. They manually help to check the valves. The officers have to exchange information with the deck to ensure that the cargo operation is adequate. This is important for balancing the vessel during its offshore services. (3) The first and chief officers need to exchange information about the cargoes because this information is necessary to enable the first officer to calculate how much mud and fresh water he can provide to the platform, and from which side of the vessel—the left or the right? In addition, the deck crew, officers, and platform are all aware of the offshore services that ensure cargo, piping, and positioning services go smoothly. The offshore services are conducted on the basis of the calculations made, yet even so, breakdowns in operations do happen because the systems’ functions are outside the domain of the maritime technology.

4.1 Self-Awareness

Both officers also need to be aware of their actions when interacting with the digital systems and with other people. For example, the first officer needs to know information regarding the crane position before positioning the vessel in the correct position. To do this, he needs help from the deck, the platform, and also from his colleague, the chief officer. Information about the IAS system also needs to be confirmed by the first officer, such as the status of the containers for liquids, stripping, tank, or bulk systems. All of these factors build up the actor network from the first officer’s position. The chief officer needs to check the cargo information and monitor the cargo operations as well as report information to the first officer. Hence, an understanding of the system’s architecture will provide a focus indicating how to design the systems so that they can support the operator’s self-awareness in the material environment.

Figure 3 shows the first officer’s practice of self-awareness with other actors in the network (in the box) as well as manipulated computer systems and supported tools (forms and checklists). Current maritime technology can support his awareness by checking information from the IAS system. However, it is impossible for him to process information which must be provided by the other actors, such as the chief officer, the platform crew, and the deck crew, all of whom have to communicate with the first officer during the dynamic positioning operation. The first officer has to make his self-awareness visible and public by means of the communication tools. Maritime technology, to some extent, must support such self-awareness, although this is outside the functionalities of the dynamic positioning system. However, without these self-awareness oriented activities, the dynamic positioning operation is pointless regarding safety operations in some extent. KTT integrates social interactions into machinery via connecting actors (human and nonhuman) in the network by weakening the system borders between social world and machine world (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
figure 3

First officer’s self-awareness

Full size image

4.2 We-Awareness

Interactive relationships lead both actors toward task accomplishment in a safe manner through their joint effort. The chief officer needs information from both the platform and the deck crew when doing the cargo service. The platform needs to let the chief officer know what cargo needs to be conveyed up and down from the platform. In the meantime, this information about the cargo needs to be forwarded to the deck crew by the chief officer because the deck crew needs to double check the cargo information and coordinate with the platform to position the cargo in a suitable place. In addition, the chief officer needs to tell the deck crew where to position the cargo on the deck. Hence, the chief officer, the deck crew, and platform have to be aware of each other’s tasks and understand the activities that are done by the other actors (see Fig. 4) with respect to purposes of safety in the actor network they built jointly.

Fig. 4.
figure 4

We-awareness in chief officer, platform and deck crew’s interaction

Full size image

4.3 Group-Awareness

An offshore service is complex. The offshore service demands a high level of cooperation between the DP operation and the cargo operation because work conditions at sea are unstable. The first officer needs to make sure the vessel is in the correct position and has a good balance to counter the sea waves. When servicing the platform with water and mud, the first officer must be assisted by the chief officer in knowing the cargo information in order to decide which container under the deck should be used. Such a decision is important for his DP operation since the IAS system is impossible to notify him regarding the balance status of the vessel [22]. The cargo information cannot be processed directly by the chief officer as he needs to confirm it with both the platform and deck crew. Therefore, in this process, when the DP, cargo operation, and offshore service come together, the maritime operation becomes a single operation, its parts organized to function together to accomplish a specific maritime task. It grounds the interactive relationships between the actors consisting of both self- and we- awareness through dynamically changing work procedures that are connected and re-connected from task to task.

The intricate relationships arising from awareness result in system functions that are unlike the process order of most engineering processes. In order to ensure better safety precautions through the design of maritime technology, our critical thinking needs to address the human activities. In addition, how these activities affect the maritime technology when in use. This is crucial for designing maritime simulation. There is a need to use this new understanding to reframe maritime technology. In relation to system operations, tools and artefacts must support the human activities. This requires CSCW researchers to design supplementary systems from a higher level than the basic technical process [23]. In addition, it is necessary for the process sequence of a system function to fit with the human activities that involve the different tasks conducted under cooperative work conditions.

4.4 Supportive from KTT to Maritime System Design

Maritime system in engineering discourse sees cooperative work as a process of connecting individual operators and interacting machines [8] through frameworks, functions, and models [24]. It is a logical process in which elements of machines are assembled, and integrated in an automatic machine as engineers believe that dividing a system’s problems into small pieces can solve the overall problem of designing a product [19]. For example, system modes are connected together as system functionalities to realize offshore operations. Operators might interact with one individual mode in servicing offshore with water and mud. However, if we assume that the mode used for providing water to platforms can cause the vessel to become imbalanced, due to the sea waves and the cargo’s weight, then other system modes cannot simply be connected to the offshore service mode, since this mode’s only function is to run piped water and mud from the containers. It is not possible for the two officers to convert this offshore operation into an automatic process as the engineers expected as shown in Figs. 3 and 4 where machinery has a flowchart-based process, i.e., cargo and IAS systems must be done after DP is finished. Officers have to engage with the DP and the cargo operation to process necessary information to assist with their own work with the offshore services. Such engagement in other work naturally has a significant impact on the human activities in the maritime technology. Humans must coordinate in order to realize the maritime technology’s functions in the material environment via digital systems, devices and other possible tools on the vessel. This reflects the current shortage of engineering design using cooperative systems in maritime technology [7] may need supportive tools, services to help offshore operations toward to safety consideration.

With KTT to support engineering design, we are able to highlight awareness in maritime operations with the purpose of visualizing the actors involved in each section of the maritime technology, the machine functions in particular. By extending each mode of function, we believe it has the potential to enhance current maritime operations toward a safer situation by zooming in a specific problem area in different actor network (see Fig. 5) to figure out possible supportive solutions and tools. This is because extending each part of engineering design for maritime technology allows each mode involving human activities and their influences to be respected and engaged in the maritime operations at the engineering process level. This additional function will be used to control the engineering process by giving humans and their awareness activities supported tools that coordinate the workflow in maritime operations, whether parallel or non-parallel.

Fig. 5.
figure 5

Adding humans and their activities into the engineering process

Full size image

Researchers have suggested that CSCW knowledge does not inevitably show how to bring design knowledge into practical design [25]. CSCW researchers collect people and material artefacts in order to deploy a different approach, informing design about cooperative systems [26], for example through workshops [25]. However, the extent to which systems engineers can benefit from engaging with CSCW researchers and users in workshops remains an unanswered question [8]. It is a dilemma for both the CSCW researcher and the engineer. Researchers have also suggested that design should use the visualized actor network [27]. All these suggestions are important and to be respected. Designers are not engineers, they are outsiders to the professional mechanical area who raise critical questions and promote design requirements according to their ability to ensure the success of the final product, so that it will be safe to use. CSCW researchers are free of the institutional and political [25] influences of the engineering world and are free to respect human values in technology and to encourage engineering design to acknowledge human activities. Engineers could benefit from the critical questions which are asked by CSCW researchers regarding human influences on technology use in order to create a more comprehensive account of the cooperative situation [25]. Hence, we believe that by applying awareness in actor networks during offshore operations, system architecture could be designed as a process that involves humans and their supported tools in order to coordinate maritime technology in use.

Analyzing awareness in ANT allows engineers to become aware of the interactive relations among humans and with machines. In addition, it suggests how an interactive relationship can be built around machine activity. This process would allow the designer to scrutinize the design for cooperative situations on which to focus attention [25] and thereby design between-ness [18] in order to make interactive relationships, or in other words the actor network, more readable and designable [17]. Simultaneously, it would inform engineers that engineering systems need to allow room for human values and supported tools in coordinating the human activities with the running of the machine. Hence, the assembly of a single machine to represent cooperative work becomes a challenge, but human values and human activities, with their supported tools, can successfully contribute to meeting this deficiency. It may be incorrect to change the whole structure of the engineering process involved in maritime control functions. However, we can transfer design knowledge to notify engineers where designers can contribute to enable human activities to be appreciated in the application of maritime technology. KTT stands for this point of view.

5 Conclusions

We applied KTT to a maritime example to show how KTT could support engineering design through categorizing awareness in the design of cooperative systems and through visualizing the actor network. KTT does not aim to redefine the whole design process in the engineering field; rather, it offers a supportive suggestion based on knowledge of CSCW design to enhance maritime system to provide a better framework for taking human values into consideration in designing cooperative systems and systems structure. Awareness cannot be designed; however, researchers can design tools that support awareness of the group functions in cooperative systems to support humans’ activities in machinery world. Grouping functions involves an understanding of how humans function in operations and what materials they use. Designing cooperative systems thus becomes a way to design supportive tools for actors and their relationships with other actors. We conclude that KTT is a not standalone tool. It is a process that integrates design knowledge from interdisciplinary fields. Maritime technology is no exception. This field needs a fresh approach to motive and promote the engineering society. This can be achieved by embracing CSCW as a means to understand humans and their values in the design of engineering products.