| Design space for driver-based automotive user interfaces | | BIBA | Full-Text | 3-10 | |
| Dagmar Kern; Albrecht Schmidt | |||
| Over the last 100 years it has become much easier to operate a car. However in recent years the number of functions a user can control while driving has greatly increased. Infotainment, entertainment and comfort systems as well as driver assistance contribute to this trend. Interaction with these systems plays an important role, as on one hand this can improve the user experience while driving but on the other hand it may distract from the primary task of driving. User interfaces in cars differ regarding the number of input and output devices and their placement in the car to a great extent. In this paper, we introduce a first design space for driver-based automotive user interfaces that allows a comprehensive description of input and output devices in a car with regard to placement and modality. This design space is intended to provide a basis for analyzing and discussing different user interface arrangements in cars, to compare alternative user interface setups, and to identify new opportunities for interaction and placement of controls. We present a graphical representation of the design space and discuss its usage in detail based on several examples. To assess the completeness of the proposed design space we used it to classify and compare user interfaces from more than 100 cars shown at IAA2007, cars from the BMW museum, and from the A2Mac1 image database. | |||
| Assessing subjective response to haptic feedback in automotive touchscreens | | BIBA | Full-Text | 11-18 | |
| Matthew J. Pitts; Mark A. Williams; Tom Wellings; Alex Attridge | |||
| The increasing use of touchscreen interfaces in vehicles poses challenges to designers in terms of optimizing safety, usability and affective response. It is thought that the application of haptic feedback to the touchscreen interface will help to improve the user experience in all of these areas. This paper describes the initial outcomes of a study to investigate user responses to haptic touchscreens using a simulated driving scenario based on the Lane Change Test, along with representative use case tasks. Results indicate preference for multi-modal feedback and user acceptance of the haptic feedback technology. Effects relating to multi-modal interaction and attentional demand are also observed. | |||
| Towards an H-Mode for highly automated vehicles: driving with side sticks | | BIBA | Full-Text | 19-23 | |
| Martin Kienle; Daniel Damböck; Johann Kelsch; Frank Flemisch; Klaus Bengler | |||
| The increasing traffic volume confronts the road user with a challenging
task. The high number of traffic deaths might not be reducible with passive
safety alone. However systems that actively influence the guidance of vehicles,
like assistance and automation systems, can make a difference towards higher
safety, comfort and efficiency. Some of these systems completely take over
single subtasks like speed or distance control. This, in turn can lead to
effects like "out of the loop", where the driver withdraws from the actual task
and even stops monitoring. In order to realize a safe automation system, the
project H-Mode follows an approach where both, driver and assistance system are
simultaneously affecting the vehicle, whereby the operator is kept in the loop
and active. Moreover a haptic-multimodal communication between driver and
automation is established by using active interfaces. Regarding this
communication alternative control elements, especially two dimensional ones
have to be considered.
The study presented in this paper compares conventional interfaces (steering wheel and pedals) with different configurations of an active side stick. It is shown, that two dimensional elements have the potential to combine the driver-automation communication with acceptable drivability. | |||
| In-vehicle technology functional requirements for older drivers | | BIBA | Full-Text | 27-33 | |
| Andry Rakotonirainy; Dale Steinhardt | |||
| Older drivers represent the fastest growing segment of the road user population. Cognitive and physiological capabilities diminishes with ages. The design of future in-vehicle interfaces have to take into account older drivers' needs and capabilities. Older drivers have different capabilities which impact on their driving patterns and subsequently on road crash patterns. New in-vehicle technology could improve safety, comfort and maintain elderly people's mobility for longer. Existing research has focused on the ergonomic and Human Machine Interface (HMI) aspects of in-vehicle technology to assist the elderly. However there is a lack of comprehensive research on identifying the most relevant technology and associated functionalities that could improve older drivers' road safety. To identify future research priorities for older drivers, this paper presents: (i) a review of age related functional impairments, (ii) a brief description of some key characteristics of older driver crashes and (iii) a conceptualisation of the most relevant technology interventions based on traffic psychology theory and crash data. | |||
| A cognitive schema approach to diagnose intuitiveness: an application to onboard computers | | BIBA | Full-Text | 35-42 | |
| Sandrine Fischer; Makoto Itoh; Toshiyuki Inagaki | |||
| Intuitive use is met when prior knowledge is transferred to new task environments. The empirical fact that transfer relies on schemas led us to diagnose intuitiveness based on schema induction. Two cognitive tasks were designed to make novice users perceive versus induce all the states of a prototype onboard computer. Subsequent interaction performances with the system validated the induction effect of the procedure and its interaction with familiarity, known as a primary factor of intuitive use. Implications for the diagnosis and the design of intuitive interfaces are discussed. | |||
| The theater-system technique: agile designing and testing of system behavior and interaction, applied to highly automated vehicles | | BIBA | Full-Text | 43-46 | |
| Anna Schieben; Matthias Heesen; Julian Schindler; Johann Kelsch; Frank Flemisch | |||
| In this paper, the theater-system technique, a method for agile designing and testing of system behavior and interaction concepts is described. The technique is based on the Wizard-of-Oz approach, originally used for emulating automated speech recognition, and is extended towards an interactive, user-centered design technique. The paper describes the design process using the theater-system technique, the technical build-up of the theater-system, and an application of the technique: the design of a haptic-multimodal interaction strategy for highly automated vehicles. The use of the theater-system in the design process is manifold: It is used for the concrete design work of the design team, for the assessment of user expectations as well as for early usability assessments, extending the principles of user-centered design towards a dynamically balanced design. | |||
| Towards a flexible UI model for automotive human-machine interaction | | BIBA | Full-Text | 47-50 | |
| Guido de Melo; Frank Honold; Michael Weber; Mark Poguntke; André Berton | |||
| In this paper we present an approach for creating user interfaces from abstract representations for the automotive domain. The approach is based on transformations between different user interface abstraction levels. Existing user interface representation methods are presented and evaluated. The impact of specific requirements for automotive human-machine interaction is discussed. Considering these requirements a process based on transformation rules is outlined to allow for flexible integration of external infotainment applications coming from mobile devices or web sources into the in-car interaction environment. | |||
| Developing a low-cost driving simulator for the evaluation of in-vehicle technologies | | BIBA | Full-Text | 51-54 | |
| Garrett Weinberg; Bret Harsham | |||
| We present a case study concerning the development of a driving simulator at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs. By relying largely on off-the-shelf components, we have kept the total system cost under USD 60,000, yet attained a level of fidelity comparable with more expensive, custom-built research simulators. | |||
| Open vehicular data interfaces for in-car context inference | | BIBA | Full-Text | 57-62 | |
| Matthias Kranz; Eduard Weber; Korbinian Frank; Daniel Hermosilla Galceran | |||
| In this paper, we present a concept for an open vehicular data interface and describe it's components and architecture. We discuss the enabled applications in the context of advanced driver assistance systems with a focus on human-machine interfaces, vehicle-to-x (V2X) communication and context inference systems. We conclude by a presentation of the initial implementation and deployed system. | |||
| Efficiency of visual time-sharing behavior: the effects of menu structure on POI search tasks while driving | | BIBA | Full-Text | 63-70 | |
| Tuomo Kujala | |||
| In this paper, the effects of two user interface menu structures on a mobile device display, list and grid, are compared in a driving simulation with the measures of visual time-sharing efficiency, visual load, driving performance and secondary task performance. Eighteen participants conducted a set of eight Point-of-Interest (POI) search tasks with the grid- or list-style menus on navigation software during simulated driving. Between-subject analysis revealed that the list-style menu structure supports more efficient and systematic, and thus, safer interaction while driving than the grid-style menu, in terms of time-sharing and total glance time. However, significant effects of the menu structures were not found in secondary task performance, driving performance measured as lane excursions, or in the measures of average duration of, or total number of glances at the display. The results also suggest that the fewer items in a view, the more efficient and safer the interaction in terms of time-sharing. The sensitivity of the time-sharing metrics for revealing tactical level driver distraction in driving simulation can be argued as being at a higher level than the sensitivity of metrics related to lane maintenance, visual load or secondary task performance. | |||
| Toggle strategies for the POI selection via the iDrive controller | | BIBA | Full-Text | 71-74 | |
| Ronald Ecker; Verena Broy; Nina Joshi | |||
| The importance of spatial and geo-based information has increased over the last few years. The most prevalent example of this kind of information is points of interest (POI) like hotels, restaurants, gas stations, etc. As cars are made for individual transportation, interacting with geo-based information via the In-vehicle Information System (IVIS) should be possible. At present, state-of-the-art IVIS only permit a list based or center based selection on the map, which makes it difficult to handle a high closeness of geo-based data. In this paper, we present alternative approaches for selecting geo-based data with a multifunctional controller. In our work, visual cues help users predict the selection order. An explorative user study showed potential advantages of our concepts. | |||
| On timing and modality choice with local danger warnings for drivers | | BIBA | Full-Text | 75-78 | |
| Yujia Cao; Sandro Castronovo; Angela Mahr; Christian Müller | |||
| We present an experimental study on the effectiveness of five modality variants (speech, text-only, icon-only, two combinations of text and icons) for presenting local danger warnings for drivers. Hereby, we focus on sudden appearing road obstacles within a maximum up-to-date scenario as it is envisaged in Car2Car communication research. The effectiveness is measured by the minimum time necessary for fully interpreting the content. Results show that text-only requires the most time while icon only is perceived the fastest. The two combined versions lie in between. The minimum length for speech is determined by the duration of the utterance, which is longer than perception time of text-only in this case. However, speech could be decoded reliably by nearly all subjects. Results indicate further that a blinking visual cue provided through the periphery visual channel is able to enhance the saliency of visual modalities. Subjective judgements by the subjects furthermore suggest a combined use of visual and auditory modalities. | |||
| Towards system-mediated car passenger communication | | BIBA | Full-Text | 79-80 | |
| Angela Mahr; Margarita Pentcheva; Christian Müller | |||
| In this paper, we outline a system that supports the communication between passengers by transmitting speech (and maybe also video) of the communication partners back and forth. A study is presented that addresses the questions: 1. Is listening to noisy speech coming from the backseat really distracting the driver? Subjects are rating the truth of common-sense statements played from the back of the car (clear, noisy) while driving with a drive simulator. NOISY is rated significantly more distracting than CLEAR while objective driving performance only degrades for men but not for women. | |||
| Acceptance of future persuasive in-car interfaces towards a more economic driving behaviour | | BIBA | Full-Text | 81-88 | |
| Alexander Meschtscherjakov; David Wilfinger; Thomas Scherndl; Manfred Tscheligi | |||
| Measuring user acceptance to avoid system rejection by the users in pre-prototype stage of product development is of high interest for both researchers and practitioners. This is especially true when technology uses strategies of persuasion in an emotional laden environment like the car. This paper presents the results of an online survey aiming at evaluating the acceptance of future persuasive in-car interaction approaches for a more economic driving behaviour. Five different persuasive interface concepts are presented and studied towards their acceptance. The results show an overall acceptance of the system concepts and the usefulness of the presented method. We show that individual expectations of the systems' disturbance and risk have an effect on the acceptance of technology and the behavioural intention to use. | |||
| Enhanced auditory menu cues improve dual task performance and are preferred with in-vehicle technologies | | BIBA | Full-Text | 91-98 | |
| Myounghoon Jeon; Benjamin K. Davison; Michael A. Nees; Jeff Wilson; Bruce N. Walker | |||
| Auditory display research for driving has mainly focused on collision warning signals, and recent studies on auditory in-vehicle information presentation have examined only a limited range of tasks (e.g., cell phone operation tasks or verbal tasks such as reading digit strings). The present study used a dual task paradigm to evaluate a plausible scenario in which users navigated a song list. We applied enhanced auditory menu navigation cues, including spearcons (i.e., compressed speech) and a spindex (i.e., a speech index that used brief audio cues to communicate the user's position in a long menu list). Twenty-four undergraduates navigated through an alphabetized song list of 150 song titles -- rendered as an auditory menu -- while they concurrently played a simple, perceptual-motor, ball-catching game. The menu was presented with text-to-speech (TTS) alone, TTS plus one of three types of enhanced auditory cues, or no sound at all. Both performance of the primary task (success rate of the game) and the secondary task (menu search time) were better with the auditory menus than with no sound. Subjective workload scores (NASA TLX) and user preferences favored the enhanced auditory cue types. Results are discussed in terms of multiple resources theory and practical IVT design applications. | |||
| Heart on the road: HRV analysis for monitoring a driver's affective state | | BIBA | Full-Text | 99-106 | |
| Andreas Riener; Alois Ferscha; Mohamed Aly | |||
| Driving a vehicle is a task affected by an increasing number and a rising
complexity of Driver Assistance Systems (DAS) resulting in a raised cognitive
load of the driver, and in consequence to the distraction from the main
activity of driving. A number of potential solutions have been proposed so far,
however, although these techniques broaden the perception horizon (e. g. the
introduction of the sense of touch as additional information modality or the
utilization of multimodal instead of unimodal interfaces), they demand the
attention of the driver too. In order to cope with the issues of workload
and/or distraction, it would be essential to find a non-distracting and
noninvasive solution for the emergence of information.
In this work we have investigated the application of heart rate variability (HRV) analysis to electrocardiography (ECG) data for identifying driving situations of possible threat by monitoring and recording the autonomic arousal states of the driver. For verification we have collected ECG and global positioning system (GPS) data in more than 20 test journeys on two regularly driven routes during a period of two weeks. The first results have shown that an indicated difference of the arousal state of the driver for a dedicated point on a route, compared to its usual state, can be interpreted as a warning sign and used to notify the driver about this, perhaps safety critical, change. To provide evidence for this hypothesis it would be essential in the next step to conduct a large number of journeys on different times of the day, using different drivers and various roadways. | |||
| Drivers' quality ratings for switches in cars: assessing the role of the vision, hearing and touch senses | | BIBA | Full-Text | 107-114 | |
| Gary Burnett; Ainojie Irune | |||
| Sensory integration is critical to the perception of quality in automobile interior design. To investigate the relative contribution of the senses of vision, touch and hearing to the perception of quality for in-car switches, 30 participants rated eight switches taken from two vehicles when all senses were available and under various conditions of sensory deprivation: no hearing; no vision; no touch. Results indicated that touch had the greatest role to play in judgements of quality, enabling participants more easily to differentiate between the two vehicle designs. Furthermore, correlation and regression analyses for specific switches indicated that touch contributed up to three times as much to quality ratings compared to either the vision or hearing senses. Future research should aim to verify such findings and to establish which aspects of touch have particular influence. | |||
| An on-road assessment of the impact of cognitive workload on physiological arousal in young adult drivers | | BIBA | Full-Text | 115-118 | |
| Bryan Reimer; Bruce Mehler; Joseph F. Coughlin; Kathryn M. Godfrey; Chuanzhong Tan | |||
| In this paper, we describe changes in heart rate and skin conductance that result from an artificial manipulation of driver cognitive workload during an on-road driving study. Cognitive workload was increased systematically through three levels of an auditory delayed digit recall (n-back) task. Results show that changes in heart rate and skin conductance with increasing levels of workload are similar to those observed in an earlier simulation study. Heart rate increased in a step-wise fashion through the first two increases in load and then showed a less marked increase at the highest task level. Skin conductance increased most dramatically during the first level of the cognitive task and then appeared to more rapidly approach a ceiling (leveling) than heart rate. Findings further demonstrate the applicability of physiological indices for detecting changes in driver workload. | |||
| Driver behaviour during haptic and visual secondary tasks | | BIBA | Full-Text | 121-127 | |
| Annie Rydström; Camilla Grane; Peter Bengtsson | |||
| There has been an increasing interest for in-vehicle interfaces that make use of haptic information. A simulator study was conducted to investigate whether haptic information can facilitate the interaction with an interface while driving. The conceptual in-car interface consisted of a visual menu of four textures displayed on a screen and corresponding haptic information displayed through the interaction device -- a rotary device. The experimental conditions included either visual or haptic or both visual and haptic information. One advantage of the condition including only haptic information was that the participants' eyes remained on the road during the interaction. However, since the haptic interaction necessitated serial processing, the experimental task took longer when using only haptic information. Therefore the participants seem to have relied more on the visual information when it was available. The degradation in driving performance and mental workload assessment did not differ between the conditions. | |||
| Glancing at personal navigation devices can affect driving: experimental results and design implications | | BIBA | Full-Text | 129-136 | |
| Andrew L. Kun; Tim Paek; Zeljko Medenica; Nemanja Memarovic; Oskar Palinko | |||
| Nowadays, personal navigation devices (PNDs) that provide GPS-based directions are widespread in vehicles. These devices typically display the real-time location of the vehicle on a map and play spoken prompts when drivers need to turn. While such devices are less distracting than paper directions, their graphical display may distract users from their primary task of driving. In experiments conducted with a high fidelity driving simulator, we found that drivers using a navigation system with a graphical display indeed spent less time looking at the road compared to those using a navigation system with spoken directions only. Furthermore, glancing at the display was correlated with higher variance in driving performance measures. We discuss the implications of these findings on PND design for vehicles. | |||
| Usability evaluation of a Volkswagen Group in-vehicle speech system | | BIBA | Full-Text | 137-144 | |
| Jackie C. Chang; Annie Lien; Brian Lathrop; Holger Hees | |||
| Driving behavior has been trending towards more time in the car and longer commutes. This has fueled the demand for an increasing number of in-vehicle infotainment features, at the cost of the driver splitting attention between the primary task of driving and other secondary tasks. To demonstrate one process we use for generating continuous improvements to the usability of our infotainment systems, we discuss a study where 30 participants were asked to interact with the speech dialogue system of a Volkswagen Group in-vehicle speech system. Participants performed tasks in telephone, navigation, and map contexts. Tasks were timed and videotaped for analysis of three performance measures: 1) Task Completion, 2) Task Time, and 3) participant rating of Task Difficulty. From this analysis, we identified issues that are especially important to the interaction between the system and the driver, which we categorized into a few broad areas: System Organization, Push-To-Talk Functionality, Data Entry, and Speech Commands. Analysis of the issues specific to each category and usability recommendations for each are discussed. | |||
| Enhanced turning point displays facilitate drivers' interaction with navigation devices | | BIBA | Full-Text | 145-148 | |
| Myounghoon Jeon; Junho Park; Ubeom Heo; Jongmin Yun | |||
| Recently, the use of in-vehicle navigation devices, such as PNDs (Personal or Portable Navigation Devices) has become pervasive, and the device functions have been rapidly expanded and updated. Unfortunately, drivers often have considerable difficulty using these complex technologies. To improve and optimize PND user interfaces, the present study suggested several display improvements for the turning point, which is one of the critical usability issues. Advanced Turn-By-Turn Display and Spatial Turning Sound were suggested to facilitate the preparation of the next turns. Leading Tones for Turning was also presented to help drivers tune the timing of their turns. We evaluated these new concepts with domain experts in three countries, and improved the details of the functions. We are currently implementing those features and looking forward to demonstrating new displays on the real product in our presentation at the Automotive User Interface conference. | |||