Engaging safety delegates in a collaborative ship design process

Other conference contribution, 2011

Involving users in the design and development processes of new products, systems and work-spaces has become increasingly important, the earlier in a design process, the better. The present paper reports a project aiming to (1) develop and test a training course for seafarer safety delegates in systematic work environment analysis of ship drawings, suitable for learners with little or no previous experience of drawings, and (2) explore and critically asses the value of such an education effort in terms of usefulness for an actual ship design process. The methodology is inspired by the action research framework and problem-based learning methods with the main research tools being observations and systematic reflections on practice and theory. A test of the developed training course involved 25 safety delegates from nine different Swedish shipping companies. The learning activities included lectures and designated problem-based group work using authentic ship drawings, use scenarios and other stimuli material. At the end of the course the delegates were asked to fill in a course evaluation. The preliminary results maintain pedagogical theories regarding the importance of problem-based learning as a means of facilitating deeper understanding of a complex topic. Furthermore, the delegates’ focus on functionality is believed to complement and add value to an otherwise rule-based ship design process, balancing the prevalent technical detail perspective. In the end, the outcome of the improved design might contribute towards safer and more efficient ships