Students supported APPRISIFY of the Fehrmann Tech Group in finding ideas for the UI (user interface) design of its latest product: a smart window for the ship’s bridge.
The vision of the new development: Captains should be able to move freely on the bridge and still see all the instruments.
Their information is transferred to the bridge windows using augmented reality (AR).
You can’t see it from the front, but the captain wears a baseball cap that has it all. A kind of ‘sensor fan’ is attached to the back. This allows the wearer to see the projections on the smart windows from anywhere on the bridge.
To get inspiration for the design of the user interface, or window pane, of the new product, co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Moritz Rath worked with students from the University of Groningen in the spring of 2023. The bachelor and master students were tasked with developing a user interface for the windscreen of a barge used to transport goods on canals and rivers.
‘The special thing about the collaboration is that the students worked together with the Maritime Academy Harlingen’s training centre for seafarers. Among other things, they received feedback from captains who are potential users of our Smart Windows. Based on these results, they were able to further optimise their concepts for the user interface,’ explains Moritz Rath.
One detail that particularly impressed the AR specialist was that the students were able to use the radar image to display the edges of the coastline on the front window, making them (digitally) visible to the captain even in rain and fog.
For the company, the collaboration means building valuable knowledge in the area of UI and confirming the quality of its products.
Although the idea for the Smart Window was developed in the Fehrmann Tech Group, which has been working in the maritime industry since 1895, its employees are thinking outside the box: The Smart Window can not only be used on a ship’s bridge, but also for product presentation in shop windows or for entertainment on yachts.