An Evaluation of Touch and Pressure-Based Scrolling and Haptic Feedback for In-car Touchscreens

An in-car study was conducted to examine different input techniques for list-based scrolling tasks and the effectiveness of haptic feedback for in-car touchscreens. The use of physical switchgear on centre consoles is decreasing which allows designers to develop new ways to interact with in-car applications. However, these new methods need to be evaluated to ensure they are usable. Therefore, three input techniques were tested: direct scrolling, pressure-based scrolling and scrolling using onscreen buttons on a touchscreen. The results showed that direct scrolling was less accurate than using onscreen buttons and pressure input, but took almost half the time when compared to the onscreen buttons and was almost three times quicker than pressure input. Vibrotactile feedback did not improve input performance but was preferred by the users. Understanding the speed vs. accuracy trade-off between these input techniques will allow better decisions when designing safer in-car interfaces for scrolling applications

Investigating the Effect of Tactile Input and Output Locations for Drivers’ Hands on In-Car Tasks Performance

This paper reports a study investigating the effects of tactile input and output from the steering wheel and the centre console on non-driving task performance. While driving, participants were asked to perform list selection tasks using tactile switches and to experience tactile feedback on either the non-dominant, dominant or both hands as they were browsing the list. Our results show the average duration for selecting an item is 30% shorter when interacting with the steering wheel. They also show a 20% increase in performance when tactile feedback is provided. Our findings reveal that input prevails over output location when designing interaction for drivers. However, tactile feedback on the steering wheel is beneficial when provided at the same location as the input or to both hands. The results will help designers understand the trade-offs of using different interaction locations in the car