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

“Yes, Free Parking Lot App, No, Invisible Health Check
App in My Car”: Young Drivers’ Needs Analysis on Vehicle
Area Network Services
ABSTRACT
Recently, automobile researchers and practitioners have
spurred research on vehicle area network (VAN). To create
user-centered services instead of technology-driven services,
involving users in the early design stage is important. To this
end, we conducted focused group interviews with young
drivers for user needs analysis. The present paper focuses more
on describing drivers’ qualitative comments and concerns about
plausible vehicle area network service concepts [1, 2]. This
explorative study is expected to contribute to guiding
researchers in academia and practitioners in industry to
translate user needs into service requirements so that they could
balance users’ needs and the use of potential technologies in
service implementation.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.1.2 [Models and Principles] User/Machine Systems –
Human factors.
H.5.2. [Information Interfaces and Presentation (e.g.,
HCI)]: User Interfaces – user-centered design
General Terms
Design, Human Factors
Adjunct Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and
Interactive Vehicular Applications (AutomotiveUI '12), October 17–19, 2012, Portsmouth, NH, USA
Keywords
Focused group interview; participatory design; VAN (vehicle
area network) services
1. INTRODUCTION
Thanks to advances in network technologies and changing
perception about the role of vehicles, we can see a proliferation
of vehicle area network (VAN) or car-to-car projects led by
government, industry, or academia [3-5]. Indeed, cars are
becoming “personal communication centers” [6]. The present
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AutomotiveUI'12, October 17-19, Portsmouth, NH, USA.
Copyright (c) 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1751-1/12/10 ... $15.00
Myounghoon Jeon
Mind, Music and Machine Lab
Michigan Technological University
1400 Townsend Dr. Houghton, MI 49931 USA
mjeon@mtu.edu
study details young drivers’ needs, wants, and concerns about
diverse VAN service concepts.
1.1 VAN Service Concepts
The term, ‘VAN’ has been broadly used, including V2I:
Vehicle-to-Infrastructure, V2V: Vehicle-to-Vehicle, V2B:
Vehicle-to-Business, and IV: Intelligent Vehicle [7]. Based on
this taxonomy, we created various VAN service concepts and
classified them as follows [1-2]: V2I - Intelligent Traffic Guide,
Free Parking Slot/ Parked Car Finder, Sensory Bubble, Ambient
Awareness Ads; V2V - Awareness of Others & Their Intentions,
Drivers’ Networking; V2B - Drive-by-Payments, Home Networking,
Entertainment on Demand, Nomadic Workstation, Broadcast Your
Driving Environment, IV - In-Vehicle Driver Status Monitor
(Fatigue/Emotion), Route Buddy, Collaborative Driving, Green
Speedometer/ Peripheral Auditory Displays, etc. For more details on
each service concept, see [2].
2. FOCUSED GROUP INTERVIEW
2.1 Session Procedure
Using those concepts above, we conducted five focused group
interview (FGI) sessions with licensed young drivers (10
female and 8 male; mean age = 20.5; mean driving = 5 years).
The session consisted of two parts. In the first part, participants
discussed several topics that researchers prepared: purpose of
using their car, necessary information while driving, bad
experiences in a car, the use and possible needs of rear seats,
activities with passengers, plausible near future in-vehicle
technologies, etc. In the second part, researchers demonstrated
VAN service concepts using Microsoft Power Point with
detailed usage scenarios and obtained participants’ comments
on each idea. The present paper focuses on the qualitative data
obtained across sessions. For quantitative data analysis, see [1-
2].
2.2 Young Driver’s Vehicle Usage
Among interesting responses gathered during the FGI sessions,
we highlighted a few answers here. As bad experiences in their
car, our participants stated, ‘not able to use the car for
transporting huge stuffs’, ‘trouble when another car parked too
closely’, ‘the car stalls while in use’, ‘runs out of water in tank’,
‘hydroplaning’, ‘a battery going dead’, and ‘driving in snow’,
some of which might be tackled by VAN services.
When they get sleepy or tired while driving, the participants
turn on louder music, switch types of music, sing on their own,
talk to people, call people on speaker phone, stop for a (coffee)
break, roll the windows down, have a cigarette, or drink and eat.
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