NorSea Base App
Operational mobile application for offshore base management. Field research with real users in demanding environments.
Background
NorSea Group operates supply bases along the Norwegian coast that support offshore oil and gas operations. Base managers, logistics coordinators, and dock workers deal with constant change — vessel schedules, cargo manifests, personnel movements — often in poor weather and under time pressure.
The existing process was paper-based and phone-heavy. The goal: a mobile app that could replace the clipboard without getting in the way of the work.
The challenge
Designing for operational environments is different from designing consumer apps. Users are wearing gloves. The screen is often viewed in direct sunlight or rain. Decisions happen fast and mistakes are costly. A beautifully designed interface that requires five taps to access critical information is worse than useless.
The best interface for this context is the one that gets out of the way fastest.
Research
The project started on-site at a NorSea base in Tananger. Three days of shadowing — watching how people actually moved through their shifts, where the breakdowns happened, what information they needed and when.
Key findings:
- Critical information was scattered across phone calls, radio, whiteboards, and printed manifests
- The same data was being re-entered multiple times by different people
- Time pressure meant that anything requiring navigation or learning was abandoned
Design approach
We prioritized radically over other approaches. The app was scoped to exactly three flows: vessel status, cargo tracking, and shift handover. Everything else was cut.
Large tap targets. High contrast. Minimal text. Persistent status indicators. The prototype was tested on-site — in a high-vis jacket, on a wet dock — before anything went to development.
Outcome
The app launched in 2019 across two NorSea bases. It replaced the majority of handover phone calls and reduced the time to locate cargo status from minutes to seconds. The field research approach was cited by the client as the reason the first version was usable from day one.