Design and evaluation of a personalisable user interface in a vehicle context

Abstract

More and more functions are available to automobile drivers. A flexible and personalisable user interface tailored to suit the user’s needs can reduce the amount of distraction by displaying only the desired functions and appearance. The product relevance and user experience can also be enhanced with personalised user interfaces. This study uses experience prototyping to explore what happens if the idea of personalisable interfaces is brought into the automobile context, an area where the user interface traditionally has been rather rigid. An interface prototype was designed and evaluated by 12 participants with a set of methods that complement one another well: think-aloud, computer system usability questionnaire (CSUQ), interviews, driving simulator, and Microsoft product reaction cards. The results show that both the interface and the general concept of personalisable interfaces were well accepted. The prototype was experienced as flexible, controllable, understandable, usable, useful – but also distracting. The reported usability issues were related mostly to the use of the available controls in the driving simulator. These were, however, not severe enough to impose a detrimental effect on the driving performance. All participants stated that they would use such a system if they had access to it in their own vehicle.