Gas station flash survey: a method for interviewing drivers

Interviews and questionnaires are very important techniques to acquire information from the potential user. Surveys are one tool to understand users’ needs which is in particular helpful in the early phases of user interface design processes. To get meaningful information interface designers typically determine the target user group for an application. Most commonly, when designing in-car interfaces, the car drivers are the prime target group. In this paper we suggest a method to involve this group for a quick survey and we report our experience. The distinct features of this method are the location where the survey takes place (the gas station) and the length of the interview (2 to 5 minutes). This place ensures that the people actually use cars and have driven for sometime before the interview. The time is determined due to the task (filling the car) and people typically do not have plans how to spend this time and are happy to use this spare time to answer questions. (author's abstract

Recognizing Topic Change in Search Sessions of Digital Libraries based on Thesaurus and Classification System

Log analysis in Web search showed that user sessions often contain several different topics. This means sessions need to be segmented into parts which handle the same topic in order to give appropriate user support based on the topic, and not on a mixture of topics. Different methods have been proposed to segment a user session to different topics based on timeouts, lexical analysis, query similarity or external knowledge sources. In this paper, we study the problem in a digital library for the social sciences. We present a method based on a thesaurus and a classification system which are typical knowledge organization systems in digital libraries. Five experts evaluated our approach and rated it as good for the segmentation of search sessions into parts that treat the same topic

Bridging the communication gap: a driver-passenger video link

"In a recent large-scale naturalistic study, driver-passenger interactions were identified as a major source of driver distraction. According to this study, driver inattention to the road is often caused by conversation with passengers. This suggests that when driving and conversing with passengers, drivers attempt to bridge the visual communication gap with passengers by turning to look at them. In an online survey presented in this paper, responses confirmed that most drivers interact with their passengers while driving and and want eye contact during these interactions; however most would also prefer to keep their eyes on the road while driving. To address these conflicting preferences, a driving simulator user study was conducted with a monitor-based and a head-up display (HUD) video system. Results show that a video system can provide drivers with greater visual contact with passengers without degrading driving performance. Participants also had greater interest in using a HUD-based system." (author's abstract

Supporting the Development Process of Multimodal and Natural Automotive User Interfaces

Nowadays, driving a car places multi-faceted demands on the driver that go beyond maneuvering a vehicle through road traffic. The number of additional functions for entertainment, infotainment and comfort increased rapidly in the last years. Each new function in the car is designed to make driving as pleasant as possible but also increases the risk that the driver will be distracted from the primary driving task. One of the most important goals for designers of new and innovative automotive user interfaces is therefore to keep driver distraction to a minimum while providing an appropriate support to the driver. This goal can be achieved by providing tools and methods that support a human-centred development process. In this dissertation, a design space will be presented that helps to analyze the use of context, to generate new ideas for automotive user interfaces and to document them. Furthermore, new opportunities for rapid prototyping will be introduced. To be able to evaluate new automotive user interfaces and interaction concepts regarding their effect on driving performance, a driving simulation software was developed within the scope of this dissertation. In addition, research results in the field of multimodal, implicit and eye-based interaction in the car are presented. The different case studies mentioned illustrate the systematic and comprehensive research on the opportunities of these kinds of interaction, as well as their effects on driving performance. We developed a prototype of a vibration steering wheel that communicates navigation instructions. Another prototype of a steering wheel has a display integrated in the middle and enables handwriting input. A further case study explores a visual placeholder concept to assist drivers when using in-car displays while driving. When a driver looks at a display and then at the street, the last gaze position on the display is highlighted to assist the driver when he switches his attention back to the display. This speeds up the process of resuming an interrupted task. In another case study, we compared gaze-based interaction with touch and speech input. In the last case study, a driver-passenger video link system is introduced that enables the driver to have eye contact with the passenger without turning his head. On the whole, this dissertation shows that by using a new human-centred development process, modern interaction concepts can be developed in a meaningful way.Das Führen eines Fahrzeuges stellt heute vielfältige Ansprüche an den Fahrer, die über das reine Manövrieren im Straßenverkehr hinausgehen. Die Fülle an Zusatzfunktionen zur Unterhaltung, Navigation- und Komfortzwecken, die während der Fahrt genutzt werden können, ist in den letzten Jahren stark angestiegen. Einerseits dient jede neu hinzukommende Funktion im Fahrzeug dazu, das Fahren so angenehm wie möglich zu gestalten, birgt aber anderseits auch immer das Risiko, den Fahrer von seiner primären Fahraufgabe abzulenken. Eines der wichtigsten Ziele für Entwickler von neuen und innovativen Benutzungsschnittstellen im Fahrzeug ist es, die Fahrerablenkung so gering wie möglich zu halten und dabei dem Fahrer eine angemessene Unterstützung zu bieten. Werkzeuge und Methoden, die einen benutzerzentrierten Entwicklungsprozess unter-stützen, können helfen dieses Ziel zu erreichen. In dieser Dissertation wird ein Entwurfsraum vorgestellt, welcher helfen soll den Benutzungskontext zu analysieren, neue Ideen für Benutzungsschnittstellen zu generieren und diese zu dokumentieren. Darüber hinaus wurden im Rahmen der Arbeit neue Möglichkeiten zur schnellen Prototypenerstellung entwickelt. Es wurde ebenfalls eine Fahrsimulationssoftware erstellt, welche die quantitative Bewertung der Auswirkungen von Benutzungs-schnittstellen und Interaktionskonzepten auf die Fahreraufgabe ermöglicht. Desweiteren stellt diese Dissertation neue Forschungsergebnisse auf den Gebieten der multimodalen, impliziten und blickbasierten Interaktion im Fahrzeug vor. In verschiedenen Fallbeispielen wurden die Möglichkeiten dieser Interaktionsformen sowie deren Auswirkung auf die Fahrerablenkung umfassend und systematisch untersucht. Es wurde ein Prototyp eines Vibrationslenkrads erstellt, womit Navigations-information übermittelt werden können sowie ein weiterer Prototyp eines Lenkrads, welches ein Display in der Mitte integriert hat und damit handschriftliche Texteingabe ermöglicht. Ein visuelles Platzhalterkonzept ist im Fokus eines weiteren Fallbeispiels. Auf einem Fahrzeugdisplay wird die letzte Blickposition bevor der Fahrer seine Aufmerksamkeit dem Straßenverkehr zuwendet visuell hervorgehoben. Dies ermöglicht dem Fahrer eine unterbrochene Aufgabe z.B. das Durchsuchen einer Liste von Musik-titel schneller wieder aufzunehmen, wenn er seine Aufmerksamkeit wieder dem Display zuwendet. In einer weiteren Studie wurde blickbasierte Interaktion mit Sprach- und Berührungseingabe verglichen und das letzte Fallbeispiel beschäftigt sich mit der Unterstützung der Kommunikation im Fahrzeug durch die Bereitstellung eines Videosystems, welches Blickkontakt zwischen dem Fahrer und den Mitfahrern ermöglicht, ohne dass der Fahrer seinen Kopf drehen muss. Die Arbeit zeigt insgesamt, dass durch den Einsatz eines neuen benutzerzentrierten Entwicklungsprozess moderne Interaktionskonzept sinnvoll entwickelt werden können

The Role of Word-Eye-Fixations for Query Term Prediction

Throughout the search process, the user's gaze on inspected SERPs and websites can reveal his or her search interests. Gaze behavior can be captured with eye tracking and described with word-eye-fixations. Word-eye-fixations contain the user's accumulated gaze fixation duration on each individual word of a web page. In this work, we analyze the role of word-eye-fixations for predicting query terms. We investigate the relationship between a range of in-session features, in particular, gaze data, with the query terms and train models for predicting query terms. We use a dataset of 50 search sessions obtained through a lab study in the social sciences domain. Using established machine learning models, we can predict query terms with comparably high accuracy, even with only little training data. Feature analysis shows that the categories Fixation, Query Relevance and Session Topic contain the most effective features for our task