User Interface Design Guidelines for Marine Autonomous Operations Involving a Large Number of Actors, Devices and Sensors

User interface (UI) is a platform that enables interaction between a human and a machine, a visual part of an information device, such as a computer or software, which user interacts with. A good user interface design makes operating a machine efficient, safe and user friendly in a way that gives the desired result.

This paper describes a set of guidelines defined for marine autonomous operations where many actors, devices and sensors are interacting. The UI should manage and present in a user-friendly manner a large amount of data, ensuring situation awareness for the operator/user. The design guidelines of the user interface consist of both a work process part and a content part, also called user experience design (UX). The work process consists of four sections: manage, plan, operate and evaluate, while the content part focuses on how to show the information. Both parts will be detailed and discussed and can be taken as a reference for designing user interfaces in particular for marine autonomous opera