Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications

The selection of any petrol station clears the list and
displays a new page with information only about the
selected station. The user has to navigate ‘back’ and
‘forth’ between the search result list and the details page
for each petrol station in order to compare information.
Figure 1 - Search result for petrol station as list in mapbased
tablet application
The search engine interaction model (Figure 2, left side)
illustrates users’ interaction with SERPs, moving back and
forth between search results (A, B, C, D) and the actual
SERP (central point).
Figure 2 - Contrasting Interaction Models
However, none of the alternative approaches such as
contextual search [6] and search result clustering [7]
challenges the current paradigm of how users interact with
the results. This becomes the more apparent when
considering that the user is performing the search in a
moving vehicle. For instance, the driver may want to
search for a petrol station with the cheapest fuel and with a
cash machine – this would require exploration of the
facilities and comparison of the pricelist of many petrol
stations – a tedious task using the paradigm described.
In-Car UI
The majority of research on interactions with in-car
information systems has focused on the driver and the
devices that are integrated in the vehicle or used primarily
for navigation. Comparatively fewer works – if at all -
have looked at the user experience of systems targeted at
tablets for use by both drivers and passengers. Any system
for use by drivers must prioritise safety of use, for obvious
reasons. Such systems provide a poor user experience from
a passenger’s point of view, but may also exclude the
passenger from effectively using such a system. Yet, a
system that considers both passenger and driver
requirements may ultimately provide a better and safer
experience for both. In their work, Inbar and Tractinsky
[5] refer to passengers as “incidental users”, who can
“buffer the driver from information overload”. They argue
that “the traditional, driver-focused design of car
dashboards, entirely overlooks this possibility [of sharing
information with passengers]”. Inbar and Tractinsky raise
a number of interesting motivations for designing IVIS
that are more inclusive for passengers in front or back
seats, however their primary focus is on how existing
driver dashboards may be re-designed. Yet with the
emergence of a whole new range of mobile devices, smart
phones and tablets in particular, dedicated devices that can
serve as a passenger-centric front-end to IVIS become
increasingly relevant. Focusing on a dedicated user
interface for passengers introduces an entirely different set
of user requirements than one would apply to drivercentric
user interfaces.
In Beeharee et al. [1] the authors discuss the application of
a dedicated information exploration user interface for
“intelligent in-car services” which is designed to address
the limitations described above. While it was initially
discussed as a potentially effective driver-centric interface,
in this paper we explore its applicability as a passengercentric
interface. In contrast to traditional search user
interfaces, the described information exploration interface
– also referred to as Focus-Metaphor Interface (FMI) [3] -
enables seamless exploration of the underlying information
spaces
SAFETRIP
From our study, it is evident that information exploration
is more frequent during long trips across unfamiliar region
and beyond country borders. The requirements for high
bandwidth and geographical coverage call for connectivity
solutions beyond cellular network – which typically suffer
from poor coverage along much of the road network in
uninhabited regions. The SafeTRIP project [2] aims to
utilize a new generation of satellite technology to improve
the safety, security and environmental sustainability of
road transport. The project will deliver an open platform
that exploits the advantages of the satellite communication
component to allow for innovative and sustainable
automotive services.
Figure 3 - The SafeTRIP concept