Modern in-vehicle experiences are brimming with functionalities and convenience
driven by automation, digitalization, and electrification. While automotive
manufacturers are competing to provide the best systems to their customers,
there is no common ground to evaluate these in-vehicle experiences as they
become increasingly complex. Existing automotive guidelines do not offer
thresholds for cognitive distraction, or—more appropriately—“disengagement.”
What can researchers can do to change this?
Evaluation of the In-vehicle Experience discusses acceptable levels
of disengagement by evaluating the driving context and exploring how system
reliability can translate to distraction and frustration. It also covers the
need to test systems for their complexity and ease of use, and to prevent users
from resorting to alternative systems while driving (e.g., smartphones). It
highlights the value in naturalistic data generation using vehicles already sold
to customers and the issues around privacy and trust concerning such methods.
Lastly, it talks about the opportunities and challenges behind developing
automated testing methods for in-vehicle experiences that simulate human
behavior and how to shorten evaluation timelines to enabling a much larger scale
of systems testing.