Does Being Human Cause Human Errors? Consideration of Human-Centred Design in Ship Bridge Design

75%–96% shipping accidents involved human-error in 2018 [1]. One of the most critical reasons was poor design of controls and lack of proper procedures [2]. It is unclear if ship-bridge design entirely considers user experience (UX). The crews are working in an increasingly time/resource pressured industry. Especially when hazardous scenarios occur, the increased amount of information being processed and decreased available time for decision-making together make it error-prone, adding an extra complexity to UX. Investigating the extent to which design influences human-error and distracts people from task’s reality, this paper evaluates the overlooked aspects of ship-bridge design to understand if it distorts user’s reality in hazardous situations and increases high cognitive loads with complex interfaces. Considering human-centred marine design (HCMD) that deals with end-user, addresses issues by adopting human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) introduced in industrial design, and applying product semantics/semiotics to the bridge design, reducing high cognitive loads with ergonomic interfaces.