User Interfaces and User Experiences: UI and UX at Sea

Since it’s built for a wide variety of applications, from marine to residential to enterprise deployments, Crestron’s engineers ensured that the 80 Series brought significantly more processing power and a platform built for rich HTML5 interfaces than previous devices. As Papadopoulos notes, those upgrades make a big difference in the luxury yachting universe.
“Performance directly influences perceived luxury,” he says. “The faster and smoother an interface responds, the more premium the entire yacht feels.

“Here's the thing about UI and UX on a panel like this: they're not two separate jobs. Everyone thinks they are, but they are not. A great animation (UI) doesn't just look good, it acts like a subconscious user manual (UX) and that's not a minor detail or a nice-to-have feature. It's a fundamental part of delivering an intuitive experience.

“Fluid motion is essential to a premium interface — not as decoration, but as communication. Subtle movement is how a UI explains itself: where a page came from, what a control just did, where your attention should go. Doing that smoothly takes real processing power, and the moment it stutters, the sense of quality is gone.

“That kind of nuance needs real processing power underneath it, and it's not just animation that asks for it. We pull live data straight from services like Windy now, real maps, real wind and swell overlays, rendered directly on the panel. Rendering a live map with moving weather data on top of it, smoothly, without the panel choking, is a real processing job. Add to that real time video preview from DM NVX video sources and cameras and notification popups, and you’re asking a lot from a device.

“In the past, I'd have agreed to all of that for the client and manage to deliver by carefully calculating the processing power budget and testing each interaction. The 80 Series changes that. With significantly more performance headroom and HTML5 frameworks handling much of the heavy lifting, the limits are no longer technical — they're creative, as they should be.”

Kerkhof agrees: “You can do even more personalization just because there's so much more compute power, more calculating power, and more brains in the 80 Series than their predecessors in the 70 Series. And Crestron’s HTML5 UI platform (CH5) lets programmers build fully custom interfaces using standard web development tools.”

The Details of Luxury

Speed and performance aren’t the only hallmarks of a luxury control experience, of course, and sometimes what seems like a secondary feature can play a very large role.

Radar-based proximity sensing means panels wake instantly when someone approaches. That may sound to the average user like “no big deal,” but Papadopoulos has a different view: “In an environment like this, nothing is just a small detail.”

“Nobody consciously registers ‘the panel woke up in under a second,’ but they absolutely register the opposite. A half second of lag, a screen that’s still dark when a hand reaches for it, and the whole system reads as unreliable, even if everything behind it is rock solid. That first touch happens in a hallway between the owner's cabin and the salon at six in the morning, half asleep, or in front of six guests walking in for cocktails. Luxury does not forgive.”

A panel that wakes the instant you approach it is a must for a great user experience, but Papadopoulos notes that there’s more to it. “The interface shouldn't only sense presence; it should understand its environmental context and adapt to it, and even anticipate what the user wants. Is the vessel moored or anchored or moving? Where is the sun? What time is it? What kind of room is this? ‘State awareness’ is the key concept here.”

“Panel brightness, UI contrast and dark/bright UI modes are also perfect examples of tiny details that are not tiny after all. It's not enough for the panel to wake — it has to wake at the right brightness for the ambient light and for the space it lives in and it has to wake at the appropriate page for the application. Picture a hallway panel at two in the morning versus a panel in the engine room. One should greet you softly; the other must be 24/7 accessible with a space health overview.

“A yacht is an always moving target and the interface should know that.”

Different Spaces

The 80 Series line offers options to hit that target — no matter the room. “We've got 8-inch, 10-inch, and 15-inch screens; we've got tabletop configurations, we've got POE and Wi-Fi connectivity features on these panels,” notes Kerkhof. “We can configure these screens in portrait or landscape applications. They’re really flexible.”

So what screen goes where? What's the best option, say, for the bridge, for the salon, for the state rooms?

“What I typically indeed see on board is a combination of sizes and the solutions,” Kerkhof explains. “Think about what we have to include on an electro-technical officer’s (ETO) panel: You’ll need a very good overview of the current status of the system. You’ll see a larger panel with a very utilitarian interface.

“In the galleys, you’ll see the 8-inch screen being used a lot because those panels then can also function as a call system: ‘Okay, the owner is now on the aft deck and he's looking for a margarita.’ With that 8-inch screen, they are big enough to display that kind of info in a relatively small space.”

But as Papadopoulos explains, there’s something of an art to finding the right screen for the space.

“Consistency is what makes a system easy to live with,” he notes. “Once someone learns how to use one room, they should already know how to use every other room on the vessel — the same logic, the same behavior, nothing to relearn.

“But consistency doesn't mean uniformity.

“Every space aboard has its own needs, its own subsystems, and its own design aesthetic, and this has to be built into the design choices very deliberately: The wheelhouse is about utility, a master cabin is about elegance, and the main salon may need to be both. Furthermore, this often applies to users, not only to rooms. Captain, Oowner, chief stewardess, and a guest may have very different things they need to find quickly.

“So, the story we're telling is really this: one coherent language, spoken with the appropriate dialect in every space and to every user. That's the story that actually matches how someone lives on a yacht: The technology follows them, not the other way around. “Yacht interior designers are true masters of this concept, and I constantly learn from their work.”

Putting It All Together

Papadopoulos outlines the preferred end result, when placement and programming work in harmony with the right device.

“Imagine a touch screen mounted in the galley. The moment a guest places a new food and drinks order, the panel comes alive.

“The notification doesn't simply appear — it receives priority and it demands attention. The chef and kitchen staff immediately hear a non-stopping audible alert through the panel's built-in speakers while a fluid animation expands into view, ensuring the display stays awake and animating until the order has been acknowledged. Motion naturally attracts the eye, making the notification virtually impossible to overlook, even during the busiest service.

“The popup presents only the information that matters in that moment: who placed the order, where they are onboard, what they ordered, and when it should be delivered. (By the way, user avatars orbiting around immediately provide visual recognition of the guest who made the order at a glance before reading any text.”

As Papadopoulos notes — and this is the philosophy that truly underpins his work — there is a surprisingly delicate balance between technology, design, and user experience aboard a superyacht. “When those elements come together successfully, the conversation between the owner, the integrator, and the commissioning team shifts away from fixing problems and toward imagining new possibilities. Discussions become about adding features, enhancing experiences, and continuously evolving the vessel.

“That's the relationship everyone wants to be in.

“The opposite case is just as real. A badly designed UI/UX turns that same relationship into problems and troubleshooting. Users don't find the interface attractive enough to use with any joy — or worse, the UX simply doesn't make sense and the system becomes hard to use. And in my experience those problems never stay contained; they ripple out to every stakeholder in the project.

“Responsive touch panels combined with good UI design do far more than improve aesthetics. It strengthens the relationships between everyone involved in the project.”