This report describes the first Lloyd’s Register Foundation Safety Grand Challenge and details how a collaborative, cross disciplinary design research and teaching methodology can provide a platform for a broad variety of participants to develop projects in a complex design safety environment, encourage collaboration and industrial involvement in design education and contribute to a balance between technological developments and the needs of people in the future.

The Royal College of Art, generously supported by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation and working with a group of industry stakeholders, investigated two major areas of risk within the maritime context: Sea Safe transfers from ship to ship, and making the Thames the safest city river by the year 2030. In a four month project, thirty two post graduate participants from eleven disciplines and six researcher-tutors at the Royal College of Art worked together and tackle these complex and wicked design challenges using a number of novel design methods.
With a focus on finding cutting edge innovative design solution that would reduce risk on the ship to ship transfer and on increasing safety on the River Thames, the research project explored a wide range of approaches that encouraged collaboration, innovation and risk taking in design research practice. The different cultures, practices and knowledge bases led to an array of eight pioneering design solutions, ranging from product-focused innovations through to systemic solutions, material innovations and educational strategies.

This report makes a case for the culture of design engaging with risk on water in the context of the wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973; Buchanan, 1992) we identified, the methods and techniques used to tackle these challenges, how cross disciplinary projects can lead to novel insights, and how design education can be used to engage with industry and users to bridge the gap between technological innovation and user needs.

Our conclusions support the view that this approach can develop implementable new design for safety solutions, incorporate the social, cultural and psychological human factors into safety design and balances users’ needs by engagement through an appropriate use of technology. Furthermore, we uncover insights into training designers for safety critical environments and the implications this has in terms of projects, cross disciplinarity and practices in the role of design thinking in general and relating to the context of risk and safety at sea and on rivers.