12: Adjunct Proceedings - Automotive User Interfaces and ...

translate traditional elements of the identities, communities and
conversations into the automotive domain [6].
What is the identity of a driver? What his/her elements of
conversation? What can be valuable for joining a community or
create a new one? Those questions are there to be answered to, not
simply adding a 'Like' or 'Poke' button' on the deck, but carefully
crafting new meanings, or right translating existing car-specific
meaning into the new social environment. We are currently
exploring this design space, during the very early stage of our
research project. Just few examples about what we believe would
be an interesting approach into this field, from a social designer's
perspective:
What can be learnt from the analysis of the existing
communities of car modders and from the Xbox/Ps
racing gamers?
What can be learnt from existing car owners'
practices, like the customization of the cars, from
the choice of aftermarket accessories, to the
decoration of interiors and external parts?
How those practices can be somehow 'imported' into
the new domain of the ‘Social Car'?
We have started our research investigations only two months
ago, beginning with a desktop research. Several examples and best
practices are already on our table. Our initial activities considered
separately the three components mentioned above: identities,
communities and conversations. Through several brainstorming
sessions we collect examples both from the ‘social web’ domain
and from the automotive domain.
4.1 Identities in the ‘Social Car’ domain
If we think about existing social services like Facebook,
Twitter and Instagram, their users can express their own identities
into several ways: choosing a profile image and a cover image, or
selecting a specific color scheme, or adding directly personal
information on the public profile page. Another indirect way to
shape the identity is possible through the status’ updates, than
rather than being only an element of a conversation, can also
redefine and add details along time to the owner’s identity. Within
other services like Foursquare and Waze, the service itself can
assign to the user special badges or awards that, above being the
results of the user’s actions, are also a way to make visible some of
her/his attitudes, achievements, preferences and patterns, and
therefore to add elements to the identity.
In the automotive domain, cars have always been a very
special and powerful medium to communicate and express the
identities of cars’ owners. This is a very well recognized driver in
the selection of the model and the brand of the car to buy. The
spectrum of colors for the exteriors and the interiors of the car, and
the availability of several optional elements to choose from, allow
the car’s buyer to consider her/his own new car as an ‘unique’
ensemble, made just for her/him. Other aftermarket solutions allow
car’s owners to customize them even more. Self-adhesive badges,
stickers are other opportunities for personalizing the car and
therefore communicating the owner’s identity.
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Adjunct Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and
Interactive Vehicular Applications (AutomotiveUI '12), October 17–19, 2012, Portsmouth, NH, USA
4.2 Communities in the ‘Social Car’ domain
Communities in existing social services grow around a shared
interest, a preference, a specific attitude, a common ownership, or
attribute (the birthplace, the hometown, the language, etc.).
As an example, an audiophile enthusiast can follow several
forums, groups, pages on the same topic to exchange information,
opinions, suggestions for new product to buy, new settings to test,
etc. Each forum, each group, each page is a different kind of
community, with its own rules, styles, goals and available actions.
Moreover, communities can be parts of a bigger community, like
the Instagramers within Instagram. Also the CHI community is a
good example of such structure, organized in groups of interest and
in local chapters.
Within the automotive domain, there are many different ways
through which car’s owners and drivers tend to gather and organize
into groups or communities. To enlist few of them: historical cars’
collectors, specific car models’ owners (like Fiat 500), gentleman
drivers and racing enthusiasts, professionals like taxi drivers, or
truck drivers, ‘veterans’ of mythical routes like the Nordkapp: they
can be open and public, or restricted with severe rules to apply.
Other communities can grows around extreme behaviors and
interests, like the extreme modification of the interiors and the
exteriors of the car, or the passion for off-road adventures.
4.3 Conversations in the ‘Social Car’ domain
Conversations are made by all the elements that members of a
community exchange with themselves. Within social services, they
can go from simple status updates (‘Dario is on his way to NYC’),
simple actions (‘Mario likes that link’), to more complex activities.
They can go from adding a new checkpoint in Foursquare, to post a
picture with the Instagram app on the IPhone; from sending an alert
about a car accident with Waze, to interact with an app within the
Facebook timeline. Obviously, they can be also short and long
threads of messages, comments to messages, chats, private
messages, etc., and any other combination of them.
In the automotive domain, conversations can be identified and
described with a similar approach and in the same way: from
adding a new badge on the back of the car, to the participation at an
historical gathering; from the renewal of the subscription to a Club,
to the information exchanged with friends about how to fix that
peculiar mechanical problem. But there are other even more
specific actions, activities and behaviors that can be thought as
‘elements of a conversation’, and that can be added easily into the
conversations. As an example, when a car reaches its destination
and stops the engine, it can send automatically a status update, like
‘Dario just arrived in NYC’ (this is one of the concepts developed
within an “Hackathon” event during last spring, happened between
two developers’ teams from Facebook and Ford [11]).
5. DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES
How to express, make visible, and interact with all these
elements in a car is a huge topic inside our research project. It will
be our main focus for the next year of research. There are several
design options and strategies on the table:
Conceive new meanings to existing interactions and
objects