V.Group
ShipSure
An integrated management system & marine digital platform
An integrated management system & marine digital platform
For more than a year we partnered with V.Group's executive and development teams to facilitate in-house design sessions and create an end-to-end user experience for ShipSure 2.0, an integrated modular software solution for the marine shipping industry. ShipSure includes a modern Planned Maintenance System which provides ship owners, captains, chief engineers and other sea staff day-to-day management of their ships or fleet - customized for either complete access or limited tasks such as maintenance, budgeting, procurement, crewing, voyage reporting and client access extranet. ShipSure is designed to run on-ship and on-shore.
Challenges
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• The legacy ShipSure application was constructed as a fragmented system, which included a Planned Maintenance System, budgeting information, vessel details, certificates, regulatory information, and technical information
• Each module was either unintegrated or poorly integrated with other modules • Different areas of the suite evolved over time and used different patterns and technologies leading to poor UX inconsistencies |
Strategic Solutions
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• Improve functionality, increase system coverage, and remove/replace all paper-based processes
implementing a cost-effective system that will be successfully adopted by users is still a significant challengeFocus on customer-centricity and collaborative tools • Provide real-time environment cues and a modular, movable, repeatable system |
Research & Discovery
The process started with several site visits at V.Ship headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland. Research and discovery activities included user interviews and multiple collaborative design sessions with senior executives, principal stakeholders and multiple end-users. Problem areas were defined and prioritized for each functional area:
- Marine – manage marine assets, safety, compliance, and operational performance
- Procurement – manage control with detailed views of each ship's procurement cycle
- Crewing (Marine Manpower) – support the full operational and finance cycle of Marine HR
- Finance – provide overviews and in-depth financial information in real-time
UX Workshops
Our objective was to understand the problem areas to focus on, prioritize goals and outcomes, define success, and achieve alignment across product teams
Whiteboards
Whiteboarding and sketches were deliberate tools for problem-solving across stakeholder groups
Contextual Inquiry
During several vessel visits, we took advantage of the embedded nature of the interview: seeing users in the shipboard context of their work allowed us to understand interconnections in their workflow, and ask questions to dig deeper into processes in order to uncover solutions.
Design
At this stage thousands of words became pictures... or rather workflows, sketches, low-fidelity wireframes, and high-fidelity mockups
Solution
ShipSure's new cutting-edge digital platform made significant progress in strengthening all aspects of business and ship management, and enabled better and more efficient communications between onshore and offshore teams, from marine operations and procurement to safety reporting and finance.
Digital Logbook
In addition to the main ShipSure application, the executive team and IT department of V.Ships wanted to understand details of how engineers fill in the (paper) engine logbook, and research requirements for digitizing onboard logbook data
Challenges
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• Deck and engine room logbooks are traditionally paper documents. Their information is static, involving much manual effort and the duplication of data
• Implementing a cost-effective system that will be successfully adopted by users is still a significant challenge |
Strategic solutions
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• Reduce crew effort by inputting some data automatically (e.g., GPS), and remove duplication of effort
• Increase accuracy and efficiency • More powerful views of data, both in combination and comparison of data from disparate sources • Better storage, reduction of paper use |
Research
Our contextual inquiry revealed how paper logbooks have traditionally been used to manually record vessel and voyage data, and research confirmed that recording data in a paper format is a lengthy process, distribution of manually entered data is slow, and often entries are missing or incorrect due to human error.
Recommendations for MVP
Our recommendations included a summary of vessels' contextual inquiries, activities performed, and key findings. It also outlined UX Workflow, interactions, general requirements and screen comps