The key prerequisite for experience-driven design is to define what experience to design for. User experience (UX) goals concretise the intended experience. Based on our own case studies from industrial environments and a literature study, we propose five different approaches to acquiring insight and inspiration for UX goal setting: Brand, Theory, Empathy, Technology, and Vision. Each approach brings in a different viewpoint, thus supporting the multidisciplinary character of UX. The Brand approach ensures that the UX goals are in line with the company's brand promise. The Theory approach utilises the available scientific knowledge of human behaviour. The Empathy approach focuses on knowing the actual users and stepping into their shoes. The Technology approach considers the new technologies that are being introduced and their positive or negative influence on UX. Finally, the Vision approach focuses on renewal, introducing new kinds of UXs. In the design of industrial systems, several stakeholders are involved and they should share common design goals. Using the different UX goal-setting approaches together brings in the viewpoints of different stakeholders, thus committing them to UX goal setting and emphasising UX as a strategic design decision.

This study presents an overview to human factors challenges that potentially concern future shore control centers for unmanned ships. Although commercial unmanned shipping does not yet exist, it is worth to consider this emerging technology domain. Without the bridge and the systems supporting the crew, the ships could be lighter and carry more cargo – this would increase revenues and fuel efficiency. Literature review of autonomous and remote operation on various fields, these being aviation, forestry, cars, subway systems, space operations, military, and cranes, and making contrast to the nautical context were applied as a method for identifying potential challenges. The most prominent issues to be considered include information overload, boredom, mishaps during changeovers and handoffs, lack of feel of the vessel, constant reorientation to new tasks, delays in control and monitoring, and the need for human understanding in local knowledge and object differentiation (e.g., in differentiating between help-seekers and pirates). Positive aspects, in turn, include lack of seasickness and physical damage to the crew in harsh weather conditions, and the possibility to functional specialization. Potential interaction and representation techniques were considered as well. Overall, our study provides insight for shore control center design. We suggest that the control centers should reflect agile command and control. This implies that the unmanned ships should be attached to global support networks and be able to reproduce information for them; video and sensor data could be transmitted directly. The shore control centers should be capable and willing to proactively communicate with the manned vessels and the authorities

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are already an integral part of the equipment used by firefighters to monitor wildfires. They are, however, still typically used only as remotely operated, mobile sensing platforms under direct real-time control of a human pilot. Meanwhile, a substantial body of literature exists that emphasises the potential of autonomous drone swarms in various situational awareness missions, including in the context of environmental protection. In this paper, we present the results of a systematic investigation by means of numerical methods i.e., Monte Carlo simulation. We report our insights into the influence of key parameters such as fire propagation dynamics, surface area under observation and swarm size over the performance of an autonomous drone force operating without human supervision. We limit the use of drones to perform passive sensing operations with the goal to provide real-time situational awareness to the fire fighters on the ground. Therefore, the objective is defined as being able to locate, and then establish a continuous perimeter (cordon) around, a simulated fire event to provide live data feeds such as e.g., video or infra-red. Special emphasis was put on exclusively using simple, robust and realistically implementable distributed decision functions capable of supporting the self-organisation of the swarm in the pursuit of the collective goal. Our results confirm the presence of strong nonlinear effects in the interaction between the aforementioned parameters, which can be closely approximated using an empirical law. These findings could inform the mobilisation of adequate resources on a case-by-case basis, depending on known mission characteristics and acceptable odds (chances of success).