The use of aluminium hulls has advantages such as versatility in achieving complex shapes, lightness, strength, durability and it doesn't present corrosion issues nor embrittlement by temperature. When designing aluminium hulls the designer prioritizes welding as a major joining method. However, the aluminium welding process is complex, therefore the requirements involved in the manufacturing are critical. Furthermore, it is noted that when the design is performed on small and medium-sized vessels, these requirements are not adequately considered early in the design process. This fact is made worse when considering the product life cycle, generating problems such as redesign of the product, increasing manufacturing time and material waste. This paper proposes a design Template to assist obtaining the design specifications of aluminium vessels in the early stages of product development. The Template is based on the product life cycle and takes into account the general and specific attributes in order to generate a list of design rules, recommendations, best practices and solution-solving principles, which were established based on the literature and on professional experience. The outcome of the Template is a set of information which are available throughout the matrix. In order to improve the result, surveys and interviews were conducted with experts in the field. The main advantages of the use of this tool in designing a vessel are: i) to enhance knowledge management since new information (knowledge) can be added in the matrix cells, as the shipyard acquires knowledge; ii) to facilitate the integration of designers with different technical areas of a shipyard; iii) to reduce the design and manufacturing time of the vessel; and iv) to reduce product development costs, since waste is reduced.