Designing for conscious energy use in maritime operations
Alpha Fuel Control is a cruise control system for regulating fuel consumption on ships. The project was part of OpenZero — a research initiative at the Ocean Industries Concept Lab at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, working to reduce carbon emissions across the maritime industry by embedding energy-efficient design patterns directly into the OpenBridge design system.
Today, there is a shortage of design standards that make it natural and intuitive for ship navigators to prioritise energy efficiency in their decision-making — a challenge for an entire industry striving to lower its carbon footprint. OpenBridge aims to change that by providing a shared, open-source design foundation for maritime interfaces.
My contribution was to redesign the existing Alpha Fuel Control interface using OpenBridge 6.0 beta. The original interface was dense and visually heavy. The redesign clarified the system's key states — requesting command, taking command, being in command, and monitoring trends — and brought the interface in line with the cleaner, more structured language of the OpenBridge design system.
written with help from AI.
