Are current usabilty methods viable for maritime operation systems?

Usability is strongly linked to loss of life in many technical and incident reports. Maritime operation systems are sociomaterial systems in which many operators work cooperatively on ship bridges and decks. However, current usability methods focus more on individual interaction. Hence, applying such methods to maritime operation systems leads to several problems. Moreover, a few evaluation methods are hard to duplicate from other research fields owing to various reasons. In this paper, we indicate that maritime operation systems should consider cooperative work for providing a complete picture of interaction issues. In addition, evaluation for maritime operation systems needs deeper understanding of the relationships between human beings and systems. We discuss several usability methods that have been extracted from other close field (e.g., aviation systems, fishing systems, maritime navigation systems, and nuclear power plants) and apply insights from such fields to our case - deep-water anchor handling operation. We assert that usability in maritime domain should be expended as interaction in ecosystems such as the maritime operation system. We suggest that interaction study in maritime operation systems can offer a path to draw and measure a complete picture of maritime operation rather than purely focusing on individual usability issues.