Saad Azhar

An interactive surface solution to support collaborative work onboard ships

Industrial environments are notoriously known as difficult places to gain access to conduct any type of contextual inquiry work, and marine vessels are no exception. But once this initial hurdle is overcome, these environments reveal interesting research directions. Challenges faced onboard ships range from issues with communication links, to the lack of support for current work practices. Based on findings from an earlier field study, the work presented in this paper focuses on several challenges involving collaboration, communication, information sharing such as video and images, and tracking task completion of crew members. This paper therefore presents a prototype which consists of a Microsoft surface, mobile phones, and PCs to enable crew members onboard ships to effectively communicate and collaborate with their colleagues.

Untethered Workspaces: A Zones Concept Towards Supporting Operator Movements in Control Rooms

Within industrial domains there is a need for control room operators to be in constant contact with the different processes they are responsible for controlling. With this responsibility comes the need to constantly be near their workstations in order to monitor, diagnose and quickly troubleshoot issues presented. These workstations, however, restrict operators in control rooms from moving freely within the control room itself, such as between their own and their colleagues workstations since they cannot interact with the system from a distance. These systems also restrict those operators who need to continuously enter the control room from the plant/factory floor since interacting with process graphics requires them to remove all of their specialized equipment every time (e.g. large bulky safety gloves). We therefore present a concept for control room operators that supports their untethering from dedicated workstations, providing them with the ability to interact in a more flexible way.