Maritime in 2026: Design's Hidden Potential

In 2026, maritime product teams will face even greater pressure with stricter regulations, rising system complexity, and higher expectations from customers. Yet within this lies opportunity, as trends from 2025 converge to create hidden potential.

These trends are reshaping maritime product design:

• Development, business, and strategy converging in design thinking
• Data-driven methods moving from talk to practice
• Human-centered design maturing beyond usability into adoption and trust
• AI disrupting workflows with new opportunities and risks
• A flood of GUI tools making interfaces more powerful, and more chaotic
  
  

So far these shifts have been uneven, but in 2026 they will intersect, creating new ways of working that ease legacy integration, improve crew adoption, and reduce ripple effects across engineering, operations, marketing, and customer support.

Join us to hear from two pioneers who are setting the standard in this new way of working. Dennis Lenard (author, lecturer at King’s College London, and practitioner on 200+ projects) and Kathy Varga (award-winning designer, cognitive scientist, and experienced skipper) will show what maritime design looks like at the leading edge in 2026, with a focus on user interfaces.

How design itself is changing in 2026

Which trends from 2025 are converging in product development

Real practical examples including with deliverables and methods

What you’ll learn

Practical ways to simplify complexity and improve adoption

How product design plays into marketing to become a growth driver

How teams use design to ease integration with legacy systems

Who this event is for

This webinar is designed for decision-makers and practitioners shaping the future of maritime devices and software. Whether you lead at the executive level or work hands-on in product, engineering, R&D, or digital transformation, you’ll find insights relevant to your role.

The speakers

Dennis Lenard
Dennis is a published author and lecturer at King’s College London, with over 200 design projects behind him. A hands-on practitioner, he also develops AI software for designers, bringing research and practice together to push the discipline forward.

Kathy Varga
Kathy brings 20 years of experience designing GUIs for devices and technical software, with a focus on marine interfaces. Named Designer of the Year in 2023, she pairs her background as a cognitive scientist with her skills as an experienced skipper to create designs that work in the toughest conditions.