Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications

Christian Doppler Labor
Contextual Interfaces
Gas Station Creative Probing:
The Front Seat Passenger
The recruitment process for a creative probing study
that aimed to get inspirations for innovative and
creative user interfaces for front seat passengers is
a challenging endeavour:
�� The target group is hard to reach and changing
(not bound to a single car or driver)
�� Participants often misunderstand the requirements
to take part in a study (own a car)
Gas Station Recruiting
We propose the gas station area (Fig. 1) as a recruiting
platform, as front seat passenger can be met in
the respective context and have time to participate.
We regard the following aspects as essential:
�� The gas station surroundings (e.g traffi c, location)
�� Study target group (e.g. transients, passengers)
�� Study process (e.g. willingness, timing)
Study Example: Creative Probing
An inital study showed the potential of the recruitment
process and further benefi ts:
�� Participants conduct in-situ exercises (Fig. 2)
�� The context car serves as inspiration and is usab
le as an idea showcase (Fig. 3)
�� 80 exercises, 30 booklets, 100 pictures collected
Regarding the effort and the quality of the collected
data the approach proves his applicability.
Sebastian Osswald and Manfred Tscheligi
Christian Doppler Laboratory for ”Contextual Interfaces”
HCI & Usability Unit, ICT&S Center,
University of Salzburg
Salzburg, Austria
{sebastian.osswald; manfred.tscheligi}@sbg.ac.at
Figures 1-3 (in decending order):
1) Gas station creative probing context
2) Participant conducting an exercise in the car context
3) Demonstrating the best position for a front seat
passenger in-vehicle information system
The fi nancial support by the Federal Ministry of Economy,
Family and Youth, by the National Foundation for
Research, Technology and Development and by AUDIO
MOBIL Elektronik GmbH is gratefully acknowledged
(Christian Doppler Laboratory for „Contextual Interfaces“).