A DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH TO SUPPORTING USERS’ ADAPTATION TO SMART IN-VEHICLE SYSTEMS

The utilization of data to understand user behavior and support user needs began to develop in areas such as internet services, smartphone apps development, and the gaming industry. This bloom of data-driven services and applications forced OEMs to consider possible solutions for better in-vehicle connectivity. However, digital transformation in the automotive sector presents numerous challenges. One of those challenges is identifying and establishing the relevant user-related data that will cover current and future needs to help the automotive industry cope with the digital transformation pace. At the same time, this development should not be sporadic, without a clear purpose or vision of how newly-generated data can support engineers to create better systems for drivers. The important issue is to learn how to extract the knowledge from the immense data we possess, and to understand the extent to which this data can be used.Another challenge is the lack of established approaches towards vehicle data utilization for user-related studies. This area is relatively new to the automotive industry. Despite the positive examples from other fields that demonstrate the potential for data-driven context-aware applications, automotive practices still have gaps in capturing the driving context and driver behavior. This lack of user-related data can partially be explained by the multitasking activities that the driver performs while driving the car and the higher complexity of the automotive context compared to other domains. Thus, more research is needed to explore the capacity of vehicle data to support users in different tasks.Considering all the interrelations between the driver and in-vehicle system in the defined context of use helps to obtain more comprehensive information and better understand how the system under evaluation can be improved to meet driver needs. Tracking driver behavior with the help of vehicle data may provide developers with quick and reliable user feedback on how drivers are using the system. Compared to vehicle data, the driver’s feedback is often incomplete and perception-based since the driver cannot always correlate his behavior to complex processes of vehicle performance or clearly remember the context conditions. Thus, this research aims to demonstrate the ability of vehicle data to support product design and evaluation processes with data-driven automated user insights. This research does not disregard the driver’s qualitative input as unimportant but provides insights into how to better combine quantitative and qualitative methods for more effective results.According to the aim, the research focuses on three main aspects:•\ua0\ua0\ua0\ua0\ua0 Identifying the extent to which vehicle data can contribute to driver behavior understanding.\ua0 •\ua0\ua0\ua0\ua0\ua0 Expanding the concepts for vehicle data utilization to support drivers.•\ua0\ua0\ua0\ua0\ua0 Developing the methodology for a more effective combination of quantitative (vehicle data-based) and qualitative (based on users’ feedback) studies. Additionally, special consideration is given to describing the drawbacks and limitations, to enhance future data-driven applications

DESIGN FOR LUXURY AUTOMOTIVE HMI SYSTEMS AND DRIVER EXPERIENCES

Luxury is predominantly discussed within marketing, economics and psychology literature, with little research made into the practicalities of designing for luxury products and experiences. This thesis addresses the lack of an evidence base from which to design and virtually prototype luxury automotive HMI (human-machine interaction) systems. The work involved five interconnected studies and two industrial partners: Bentley Motors – manufacturers of luxury automobiles; and the VEC (Virtual Engineering Centre) – a consultancy and R&D organization specialising in digital simulation. In Study 1, a literature review was conducted to build a foundation for the research, providing definitions of luxury and investigating attributes of luxury products, cars and experiences. Four distinct luxury values were identified: financial, symbolic, functional and experiential. Study 2 comprised a benchmarking field study using immersion methods. The HMI system for four luxury cars was analysed to reveal state-of-the-art uses of interaction technologies and control/interaction details. The study provided the researcher with luxury car orientation, whilst uncovering notable tensions in the integration of luxurious design details with advanced interaction and interface technologies. Study 3 comprised the main field research, seeking to deeply probe drivers’ understanding and expectations for HMI systems qualified as providing a luxury experience. Semi-structured in-car interviews were conducted with Bentley Motors employees (n=28). Transcript and video data were processed using grounded theory, verbatim coding and content analysis. The verbatim codes led to a quantitative hierarchy of design criteria for luxury automotive HMI systems. The content analysis provided an exhaustive collection of user constructs that were qualitatively clustered into maps of luxury automotive HMI system and experience dimensions. In combination, the hierarchical design criteria and construct maps provide a set of guidance to assist designers when conceptualizing luxury HMI system interactions and experiences. Study 4 implemented the guidance from Study 3 through a project to ideate a set of 3 luxury HMI system concepts, as inspirational materials for Bentley Motors. A review of new, emerging and unusual (NEU) interaction technologies was made to assist the generation of concepts satisfying the luxury principle of rarity. Finally, in Study 5 a workshop with VEC experts established the plausibility of virtual and augmented reality systems to digitally simulate HMI systems using NEU interactive technologies. Study 5 satisfied a need within Bentley Motors for better understanding of how HMI system design and virtual prototyping could align. The thesis concludes that: (i) user experience goals for luxury automotive HMI systems can be uncovered in a rigorous way through design research; (ii) the design of luxury automotive HMI systems benefits from a new set of a guidance developed from research data without reliance on corporate know-how; and (iii) careful selection of virtual and augmented reality technologies can provide plausible virtual prototyping routes for HMI design concepts

Stabilising touch interactions in cockpits, aerospace, and vibrating environments

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. Incorporating touch screen interaction into cockpit flight systems is increasingly gaining traction given its several potential advantages to design as well as usability to pilots. However, perturbations to the user input are prevalent in such environments due to vibrations, turbulence and high accelerations. This poses particular challenges for interacting with displays in the cockpit, for example, accidental activation during turbulence or high levels of distraction from the primary task of airplane control to accomplish selection tasks. On the other hand, predictive displays have emerged as a solution to minimize the effort as well as cognitive, visual and physical workload associated with using in-vehicle displays under perturbations, induced by road and driving conditions. This technology employs gesture tracking in 3D and potentially eye-gaze as well as other sensory data to substantially facilitate the acquisition (pointing and selection) of an interface component by predicting the item the user intents to select on the display, early in the movements towards the screen. A key aspect is utilising principled Bayesian modelling to incorporate and treat the present perturbation, thus, it is a software-based solution that showed promising results when applied to automotive applications. This paper explores the potential of applying this technology to applications in aerospace and vibrating environments in general and presents design recommendations for such an approach to enhance interactions accuracy as well as safety

Mediated participatory design for contextually aware in-vehicle user-experiences with autonomous vehicles

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis study reports on the empirical findings of a series of participatory design workshops for the development of a supportive automotive user experience design system. Identifying and addressing this area with traditional research methods is problematic due to the different user experience (UX) design perspectives that might conflict and the related limitations of the automotive domain. Consequently, we deploy a pragmatic epistemological paradigm and apply participatory prototyping methods to resolve this problem. We conduct two iterations of design and evaluation with 19 user experience (UX) designers through individual participatory prototyping activities to gain insights into their explicit, observable, tacit and latent needs. We describe the design of a toolkit tailored to the character of the study to be used in relevant studies of ill-defined or wicked problems. The participatory design activities initially allowed us to explore the motivation to use different technologies, the system’s architecture, detailed features of interactivity, and to describe our users’ needs. As a result, our first analysis of data led us to design implications that translate participants’ needs into UX goals. We use these UX goals for the design of goal-directed personas and scenarios of use as actionable insights to develop our system. A medium-fidelity functional prototype of our system was then evaluated, while contextually aware automotive UX practitioners criticised our design decisions. Some of the essential findings when supporting the contextual understanding are generating new knowledge to inform both theory and practice. The results propose that most automotive UX designers are ready to adopt technologies that use sensitive physiological measures such as eyes, face, body tracking using cameras and computer vision. In contrast, non-automotive UX designers who empathise with the passengers and the drivers and perceive the in-vehicle space as something more private are suggesting that this might affect people’s trust. The majority agrees to collect data and communicate with the users using implicit and explicit context, as a way to support UX design in the autonomous vehicles would require the consent of the passengers. Even though UX designers suggested a general interest in the social and temporal context of the interactions, the limitations of privacy and safety in the vehicle limit them in collecting task-related contextual data leaving the social, temporal, and physical context unexplored. Safety is arguably a factor that will not restrict the future of autonomous driving experiences research and design since there is no cognitive demand on level five autonomy which hands the passengers with plenty of other options when not driving, assuming that they are ready to trust a fully automated system. However, our study does not provide us with a direction on the privacy of autonomous vehicle experiences and whether privacy will continue being a limitation in the context of self-driving vehicles. Thus, we would recommend further research on trust and privacy in fully automated vehicles. We conclude by discussing the design implications and functional tools of our system, including 1) a video tagging tool that supports saving an occurrence identified momentarily on real-time video. 2) A privacy call-wall which uses implicit and explicit context to avoid intrusiveness in private situations. 3) A human-like avatar tool for mitigating privacy issues, and 4) an interactive interviewing tool to support communication between UXers and the passengers of autonomous vehicles. Finally, 5) exploration tools, including a tool for searching participants’ characteristics and target groups of people. We further inform the body of knowledge in participatory UX and HCI methods about the advantages of our methodological approach and the limitations of using it. We discuss why involving non-experts in co-design activities using toolkits tailored to the domain of interest is valuable. Furthermore, we extensively address how, and we give directions for the design of similar toolkits by describing the toolkit that we designed and applied in our study. Conclusively we discuss the broader implications of trust and privacy in other domains and how this related to our findings

Application of Project Management Strategies and Tools for an Efficient and Successful Competition-based Engineering Senior Capstone Design Project

The industry-level engineering workforce for a project in modern times requires a clear plan and management process to execute the goals of the consumer and the producer. The engineers of tomorrow need the ability to be competitive and successful upon entry into the industry, where there have already been established management tactics for the execution of the company\u27s goals. The mentality within the industry is adaptable to senior collegiate-level competition-based capstone projects. Therefore the West Virginia University EcoCAR Mobility Challenge team has adapted, altered, or adjusted industry-level practices in order to have an overall functioning and effective team that follows a project management plan evaluating industry. The main intention of the EcoCAR Mobility Challenge is to convert a stock vehicle into an hybrid electric vehicle over four years following the Vehicle Development Process (VDP). The team started with fresh new members and team management at the start of the competition, and over the course of the competition, the team was able to adapt, alter and adjust industry-level management tactics and practices into the overall successful team. In Year 1 of the competition the team placed seventh and through the practice of using the tools from industry finished in third place in Year 3 of the competition. By executing a project management plan, teams at the university level can mitigate risk, develop proper schedules, team structures, communicate efficiently, and be successful. The skills adapted and used from industry for a competitive and efficient competition-based senior-level capstone not only will make the project itself successful as it would in industry, but knowledge of these tools prepares the students for the demanding rigorous career within a project-based or product-based industry of choice. The methods of management and tactics adopted by the team cover traditional and agile management, along with understanding management tactics in terms of communication, team structure and organization, scheduling, risk management, requirements management and change management. The tactics of management covered in this document can be adapted and applied to any engineering competition project with the desire to produce a successful product and manage and operate an efficient team for continued sustainability for future endeavors

A Methodological Process for the Design of Frameworks Oriented to Infotainment User Interfaces

The objective of this paper was to propose a methodological process for the design of frameworks oriented to infotainment user interfaces. Four stages comprise the proposed process, conceptualization, structuring, documentation, and evaluation; in addition, these stages include activities, tasks, and deliverables to guide a work team during the design of a framework. To determine the stages and their components, an analysis of 42 papers was carried out through a systematic literature review in search of similarities during the design process of frameworks related to user interfaces. The evaluation method by a panel of experts was used to determine the validity of the proposal; the conceptual proposal was provided to a panel of 10 experts for their analysis and later a questionnaire in the form of a Likert scale was used to collect the information on the validation of the proposal. The results of the evaluation indicated that the methodological process is valid to meet the objective of designing a framework oriented to infotainment user interfaces

A Methodological Process for the Design of Frameworks Oriented to Infotainment User Interfaces

The objective of this paper was to propose a methodological process for the design of frameworks oriented to infotainment user interfaces. Four stages comprise the proposed process, conceptualization, structuring, documentation, and evaluation; in addition, these stages include activities, tasks, and deliverables to guide a work team during the design of a framework. To determine the stages and their components, an analysis of 42 papers was carried out through a systematic literature review in search of similarities during the design process of frameworks related to user interfaces. The evaluation method by a panel of experts was used to determine the validity of the proposal; the conceptual proposal was provided to a panel of 10 experts for their analysis and later a questionnaire in the form of a Likert scale was used to collect the information on the validation of the proposal. The results of the evaluation indicated that the methodological process is valid to meet the objective of designing a framework oriented to infotainment user interfaces

Enhancing user experience and safety in the context of automated driving through uncertainty communication

Operators of highly automated driving systems may exhibit behaviour characteristic of overtrust issues due to an insufficient awareness of automation fallibility. Consequently, situation awareness in critical situations is reduced and safe driving performance following emergency takeovers is impeded. Previous research has indicated that conveying system uncertainties may alleviate these issues. However, existing approaches require drivers to attend the uncertainty information with focal attention, likely resulting in missed changes when engaged in non-driving-related tasks. This research project expands on existing work regarding uncertainty communication in the context of automated driving. Specifically, it aims to investigate the implications of conveying uncertainties under consideration of non-driving-related tasks and, based on the outcomes, develop and evaluate an uncertainty display that enhances both user experience and driving safety. In a first step, the impact of visually conveying uncertainties was investigated under consideration of workload, trust, monitoring behaviour, non-driving-related tasks, takeover performance, and situation awareness. For this, an anthropomorphic visual uncertainty display located in the instrument cluster was developed. While the hypothesised benefits for trust calibration and situation awareness were confirmed, the results indicate that visually conveying uncertainties leads to an increased perceived effort due to a higher frequency of monitoring glances. Building on these findings, peripheral awareness displays were explored as a means for conveying uncertainties without the need for focused attention to reduce monitoring glances. As a prerequisite for developing such a display, a systematic literature review was conducted to identify evaluation methods and criteria, which were then coerced into a comprehensive framework. Grounded in this framework, a peripheral awareness display for uncertainty communication was developed and subsequently compared with the initially proposed visual anthropomorphic uncertainty display in a driving simulator study. Eye tracking and subjective workload data indicate that the peripheral awareness display reduces the monitoring effort relative to the visual display, while driving performance and trust data highlight that the benefits of uncertainty communication are maintained. Further, this research project addresses the implications of increasing the functional detail of uncertainty information. Results of a driving simulator study indicate that particularly workload should be considered when increasing the functional detail of uncertainty information. Expanding upon this approach, an augmented reality display concept was developed and a set of visual variables was explored in a forced choice sorting task to assess their ordinal characteristics. Particularly changes in colour hue and animation-based variables received high preference ratings and were ordered consistently from low to high uncertainty. This research project has contributed a series of novel insights and ideas to the field of human factors in automated driving. It confirmed that conveying uncertainties improves trust calibration and situation awareness, but highlighted that using a visual display lessens the positive effects. Addressing this shortcoming, a peripheral awareness display was designed applying a dedicated evaluation framework. Compared with the previously employed visual display, it decreased monitoring glances and, consequentially, perceived effort. Further, an augmented reality-based uncertainty display concept was developed to minimise the workload increments associated with increases in the functional detail of uncertainty information.</div