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Job Description
We call for a practice-based PhD in interaction design that will explore the development of user interface design for energy-efficient decision-making by a variety of users on ships and on land. The PhD research will be positioned within interaction design practice with an emphasis on doing design experiments and analysis of design cases as part of the work. The research may contribute to a wide range of field such as interaction design research in domains such as design systems, behavioral design, gamification, human-automation interaction and multimodal interactions.
The project will take place at the Ocean Industries Concept Lab (OICL), a leading design research group in Norway hosted by the Oslo School of Architecture and Design – www.oicl.no. The PhD candidate will benefit from OICL´s expertise in interaction design applied to the design of maritime workplaces. The project will be integrated with ongoing PhD and industrial research projects at OICL on design systems, augmented reality and remote maritime operations.
The PhD candidate will be part of the OpenBridge design team at OICL and contribute directly to its further development and roll out – www.openbridge.no. OpenBridge is the world’s only opensource design system for user interface design in maritime workplaces. Initiated by OICL and collaboratively developed by a global community of industrial and regulatory actors, OpenBridge has been accessed by more than 2000 users from 700 different organisations in 50 countries since its open-source release in 2020. By leveraging the community of users of OpenBridge and its design resources to implement new approaches to user interface design for energy-efficient decision-making, this PhD project has the potential to generate a direct and significant impact on global maritime emission reduction.
The main supervisor will be Professor Kjetil Nordby who has long experience in supervising practice-based design PhDs. He has a solid track record in supporting strong creative and analytical designers that might lack experience in academic writing. The preferred mode of a thesis by compilation provides structured support for learning to write to academic venues and publications, including collaborative and independently authored works.
Design work in practice will consist of user-centred, iterative design prototyping and evaluation in realistic contexts of use, with direct access to ships and ship operators. The whole OpenBridge network will be made available to the candidate, including experts in energy consumption modelling and simulation.