Perceived Quality of Cars. A Novel Framework and Evaluation Methodology.

The supremacy of the automotive manufacturers today is no longer driven by them achieving a superior manufacturing quality but increasingly depends on the customer’s quality perception. Average car consumers see a car’s quality as a fancy mixture of design, aesthetics, their own previous experiences and performance characteristics of the vehicle, unlike a combination of mechanical parts, software pieces, advanced materials, cutting-edge manufacturing processes, with technical knowledge, skills and high production volumes – all ingredients involved in the modern car creation. Perceived quality is one of the most critical aspects for product development that defines successful car design.Speaking of perceived quality, we are dealing with a complex, multifaceted adaptive system; a system where a human is the main agent. “Which product characteristics require the most attention for successful car design?”\ua0 This is the question engineers and designers need to answer under the pressure of shrinking product development time, available technologies, and financial limitations, not to mention that the answer is expected to be given in numbers to sustain the fierce competition in today’s automotive industry. For this reason, the perceived quality must be understood and controlled during all stages of product development. The research presented in this thesis justifies the engineering viewpoint on perceived quality as an inevitable part of new product development. The core of this research is the Perceived Quality Framework (PQF), a taxonomy structure of perceived quality attributes and the Perceived Quality Attributes Importance Ranking (PQAIR) method, a novel method for perceived quality evaluation that can be applied to a variety of products, including cars. The PQF communicates the attribute-centric engineering viewpoint on quality perception, developed through cumulative studies in the premium and luxury market segment of the automotive industry. The PQAIR method equips engineers with practical tools for perceived quality evaluation. The proposed method helps to reach the equilibrium of the product’s quality equation from the perspective of design effort, time, and costs estimations.Altogether this introduces a new paradigm of perceived quality as the inevitable element integrated into the process of engineering endeavor regarding product attributes that communicates quality to the customer

The tactile sense as a mechanism for the reduction of visual load elicited by control interactions : an automotive case study approach to the development of generic design recommendations

This thesis examines the potential for using tactile feedback to reduce the visual load that can be associated with interacting with controls. Using the automotive context as a case study, the thesis describes the process followed in the design of a prototype tactile interface (PTI) for the control of in-car secondary functionality (navigation, entertainment and climate control). There have been many examples of the use of active and passive tactile feedback to provide information to visually impaired people. There is however a paucity of previous research into the field of tactile feedback in mainstream product design. A literature review was performed examining various issues that are associated with tactile design including cognitive processing of tactile inputs, the use oftactile feedback in products used by visually impaired people and standard control design recommendations. This was followed by the generation of initial concepts and the first study, which examined how visually impaired people interact with electronic products that are unfamiliar to them, and also examined how they used their own equipment. The results from this study, and the literature review findings were combined into a series of design recommendations for the production of tactile interfaces that aim to reduce the visual load on the driver. These design recommendations were the basis for an iterative design process that resulted in the first, non functioning PTI interface model. The first PTI was constructed using rapid prototype technologies. The first iteration PTI was examined in the second study, a user trial in a driving simulator. The study produced encouraging results with a >90% success rate for correct control selection without vision, whilst performing a driving task. The results from this study were used to refine the design of the PTI and a working, hi-fidelity prototype was constructed for use in the final study. This study involved 'on the road' user trials comparing the glance durations made to the PTI and to a baseline system using a 'repeated measures' structure. The data from these user trials were examined to determine if the PTI exhibited a reduced visual load when compared to the baseline system. The results showed the PTI fostered significantly reduced summed glance durations for 7 of the 11 tasks performed when compared to the baseline system. Three of the 11 tasks that were performed in the study produced a reduction of summed glance duration of >50%. The PTI was also shown to foster non-visual interaction, with all participants performing at least one control interaction without looking at the control arrays. The tactile coding and symbolic layout of the PTI have been shown to be beneficial in terms of reducing 'eyes off road time' and therefore reducing the risk of distraction related accidents. A review of the results from the three studies described in this thesis has enabled the development of generic design guidelines for the production of tactile interfaces where a reduction in visual load is required for the safety of the operator. The thesis has made a contribution to the understanding of the use of the tactile sense during product interactions, and highlighting the benefits as well as the limitations of the tactile sense as a feedback mechanism

Material Visualisation for Virtual Reality: The Perceptual Investigations

Material representation plays a significant role in design visualisation and evaluation. On one hand, the simulated material properties determine the appearance of product prototypes in digitally rendered scenes. On the other hand, those properties are perceived by the viewers in order to make important design decisions. As an approach to simulate a more realistic environment, Virtual Reality (VR) provides users a vivid impression of depth and embodies them into an immersive environment. However, the scientific understanding of material perception and its applications in VR is still fairly limited. This leads to this thesis’s research question on whether the material perception in VR is different from that in traditional 2D displays, as well as the potential of using VR as a design tool to facilitate material evaluation.       This thesis is initiated from studying the perceptual difference of rendered materials between VR and traditional 2D viewing modes. Firstly, through a pilot study, it is confirmed that users have different perceptual experiences of the same material in the two viewing modes. Following that initial finding, the research investigates in more details the perceptual difference with psychophysics methods, which help in quantifying the users’ perceptual responses. Using the perceptual scale as a measuring means, the research analyses the users’ judgment and recognition of the material properties under VR and traditional 2D display environments. In addition, the research also elicits the perceptual evaluation criteria to analyse the emotional aspects of materials. The six perceptual criteria are in semantic forms, including rigidity, formality, fineness, softness, modernity, and irregularity.       The results showed that VR could support users in making a more refined judgment of material properties. That is to say, the users perceive better the minute changes of material properties under immersive viewing conditions. In terms of emotional aspects, VR is advantageous in signifying the effects induced by visual textures, while the 2D viewing mode is more effective for expressing the characteristics of plain surfaces. This thesis has contributed to the deeper understanding of users’ perception of material appearances in Virtual Reality, which is critical in achieving an effective design visualisation using such a display medium

The tactile sense as a mechanism for the reduction of visual load elicited by control interactions : an automotive case study approach to the development of generic design recommendations

This thesis examines the potential for using tactile feedback to reduce the visual load that can be associated with interacting with controls. Using the automotive context as a case study, the thesis describes the process followed in the design of a prototype tactile interface (PTI) for the control of in-car secondary functionality (navigation, entertainment and climate control). There have been many examples of the use of active and passive tactile feedback to provide information to visually impaired people. There is however a paucity of previous research into the field of tactile feedback in mainstream product design. A literature review was performed examining various issues that are associated with tactile design including cognitive processing of tactile inputs, the use oftactile feedback in products used by visually impaired people and standard control design recommendations. This was followed by the generation of initial concepts and the first study, which examined how visually impaired people interact with electronic products that are unfamiliar to them, and also examined how they used their own equipment. The results from this study, and the literature review findings were combined into a series of design recommendations for the production of tactile interfaces that aim to reduce the visual load on the driver. These design recommendations were the basis for an iterative design process that resulted in the first, non functioning PTI interface model. The first PTI was constructed using rapid prototype technologies. The first iteration PTI was examined in the second study, a user trial in a driving simulator. The study produced encouraging results with a >90% success rate for correct control selection without vision, whilst performing a driving task. The results from this study were used to refine the design of the PTI and a working, hi-fidelity prototype was constructed for use in the final study. This study involved 'on the road' user trials comparing the glance durations made to the PTI and to a baseline system using a 'repeated measures' structure. The data from these user trials were examined to determine if the PTI exhibited a reduced visual load when compared to the baseline system. The results showed the PTI fostered significantly reduced summed glance durations for 7 of the 11 tasks performed when compared to the baseline system. Three of the 11 tasks that were performed in the study produced a reduction of summed glance duration of >50%. The PTI was also shown to foster non-visual interaction, with all participants performing at least one control interaction without looking at the control arrays. The tactile coding and symbolic layout of the PTI have been shown to be beneficial in terms of reducing 'eyes off road time' and therefore reducing the risk of distraction related accidents. A review of the results from the three studies described in this thesis has enabled the development of generic design guidelines for the production of tactile interfaces where a reduction in visual load is required for the safety of the operator. The thesis has made a contribution to the understanding of the use of the tactile sense during product interactions, and highlighting the benefits as well as the limitations of the tactile sense as a feedback mechanism.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

KEER2022

Avanttítol: KEER2022. DiversitiesDescripció del recurs: 25 juliol 202

Augmenting communication technologies with non-primary sensory modalities

Humans combine their senses to enhance the world around them. While computers have evolved to reflect these sensory demands, only the primary senses of vision and audition (and to an extent, touch) are used in modern communication. This thesis investigated how additional information, such as emotion and navigational assistance, might be communicated using technology-based implementations of sensory displays that output the non-primary modalities of smell, vibrotactile touch, and thermo-touch. This thesis explored using a portable atomiser sprayer to deliver emotional information via smell to mobile phone users, a ring-shaped device worn on the finger to display emotional information using vibration and colours, and an array of thermoelectric coolers worn on the arm to create temperature sensations. Additionally, this thesis explored two methods of signalling temperature using the thermal implementation, and finally, used it in a controlled study to augment the perceived emotion of text messages using temperature. There were challenges with using some of these implementations to display information. Smells produced with the scent technology were ambiguous and highly cognitive, and poor delivery to the user produced undesirable cross-adaption effects when smells lingered and mixed in the environment. The device used to communicate vibrotactile and colour lighting cues neutralized emotions in text messages. Furthermore, temperature pattern discrimination using the thermal implementation was difficult due to non-linear interaction effects that occurred on the skin’s surface, as well as latency resulting from the thermal neurological pathway and the technology used to heat and cool the skin. However, the thermal implementation enabled more accurate user discrimination between thermal signals than what a single stimulator design provided. Furthermore, the utility of continuous thermal feedback, in the context of spatial navigation, was demonstrated, which improved user performance compared to when the user was not presented with any thermal information. Finally, temperature was demonstrated to elicit arousal reactions across subjects using the thermal implementation, and could augment the arousal of text messages, especially when the content of the message was strongly neutral. However, no similar statistical significance was observed with valence, demonstrating the complex implications of using thermal cues to convey emotional information

Measuring affective responses to vehicle interior textures using Paired Comparisons

The design trend in the automotive industry is currently moving towards exploring more innovative ways of redefining the craftsmanship quality of the vehicle interior trim through perceived quality. Affective engineering has been widely used as a robust method for understanding people’ affective responses to vehicle quality attributes, also being aesthetically and physically pleasing. However, the research has identified the Semantic Differential scale and Likert scale are subject to biases and errors in assessing perceived quality attributes, resulting in non-linear measurements which ends up with poor reliability outcomes. In this study, the affective engineering approach has introduced pair comparison technique in order to measure valid and reliable participants’ affective responses using the multivariate statistical analyses of the Rasch model — with the objective to establish the linear correlation between participants’ affective responses to physical of multisensory cues of touch, vision and feeling of interior vehicle textures. In this research, the use of Rasch analysis of paired comparisons of products to derive a linear measurement of affective response is tested. Seven pieces of interior vehicle textures and nine unidimensionally fit statements to measure the dimension of perceived quality attributes. A computer-based self-report system presented one hundred and sixty-nine participants with pictures of pairs of stimuli and the evaluative statements in all combinations, and the participants were asked to indicate which stimuli satisfied the statement best. The analysis demonstrates the viability of using Rasch analysis to obtain measures of affective response from paired comparisons that participants find the choice faster and easier to make paired comparisons compared with evaluating products separately against the Likert scale. It has improved biases and error where the participants no longer make difficult judgements but that in this case, the fit of the data to the Rasch model is very poor

Dynamic simulation in virtual environments as an evaluation tool for architectural design

Ankara : The Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design and Institute of Economics and Social Sciences, Bilkent Univ., 1999.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1999Includes bibliographical references leaves 97-105.Prediction and evaluation of future performance of buildings are essential aspects of an efficient design process. This thesis aims to discuss dynamic simulation as a prediction and evaluation tool for architectural design. It is discussed that since buildings are living entities, whole life-cycles of buildings should be dynamically simulated in a highly visualized virtual environment to evaluate the future performance of prospective designs. The media of architectural design (traditional media: paper-based drawings and physical scale models; and digital media) are analyzed in terms of their capacity to support dynamic simulations. It is concluded that virtual reality systems and resulting virtual envu'onments are yet the best media for the dynamic simulation of building designs. Some recent applications are mentioned and some important considerations for the future use of dynamic simulations in virtual environments are presented.Taşlı, ŞuleM.S