Shaping Designers’ Sea Sense: A Guide for Design-Driven Field Research at Sea
Original version
Paper presented at the International Conference on Marine Design 2015, 2-3 September 2015, London, UK. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Royal Institution of Naval ArchitectsAbstract
Designers taking on marine design projects need an in-depth understanding of the context for which they design to be able
to make good design judgements. This paper suggests that such an understanding can be referred to as ‘designers’ sea
sense’, and argues that field research is paramount for designers to develop such a sense. Building on experiences with
field research at the Ocean Industries Concept Lab at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, a guide for designdriven
field research has been developed. This guide can help designers prepare for and make the most of field studies at
sea. In this paper, we introduce the guide and discuss the rationale behind it.