Evaluating the design of passenger and crew accommodation on ships

Post occupancy evaluation (POE) methods developed for evaluating buildings in use, could also be used to evaluate and inform the design of passenger and crew accommodation on ships. Like the designers of buildings, the designers of accommodation on ships rely heavily on experience and tradition. They have few opportunities to test spaces and fittings as prototypes in use before committing to final construction. They also have little opportunity to know the expectations of users - passengers and crew - and to be able to balance those expectations with the requirements of maintenance staff and ship owners, or with engineering and physical environmental constraints. Post occupancy evaluation has been developed and used in architecture during the last 20 years, as a participatory technique enabling designers to optimise the expectations of all interest groups associated with a building. It is a process of negotiation which informs the fine-tuning or re-fit of an existing building, and provides a sound database about users' expectations for the design of new buildings. It has been used on a very wide range of building applications including, for example, courthouses, retail stores, scientific research laboratories, banks, police stations, and office buildings. Post occupancy evaluation has also been successfully used to focus on specific accommodation issues such as direction finding, safety and means of egress, as well as issues of style, comfort and interior presentation. Post occupancy evaluation could assist ship designers, shipyards and ship owners to improve user satisfaction and effect economies in the fit-out design of vessels of all kinds.