Workload and navigational control : The control levels of COCOM as framework for ship bridge HMI design

A future sustainable world will also rely of safe, efficient and environmentally friendly maritime transportation. This paper suggests a new way of looking at ship bridge design based on some theoretical constructs of information processing and cognitive engineering. It briefly references two maritime accidents where a mismatch between the availability of information and human performance can be detected. It then shortly discuss the impact of stress on human performance and present how Hollnagel's Contextual Control Model (COCOM) theory can be used to structure design work and bridge layout based on operator workload. The intention is to advance HMI design and integration of bridge equipment based on the different theoretical control levels. The Scrambled control level is presently not supported by modern bridge equipment and new research into this type of user interfaces is proposed.