Design Guidelines for the Size and Length of Chinese Characters Displayed in the Intelligent Vehicle’s Central Console Interface

Abstract

In order to ensure the driver’s safe driving, the human–computer interaction interface of an intelligent vehicle needs to convey important information. The text is an important carrier of this kind of information. The design criteria of English characters have been widely discussed, including the color, meaning, size and length. However, design guidelines for Chinese characters in central consoles of vehicles have rarely been discussed from a human–computer interaction perspective. In this paper, we investigated the size and the length of Chinese characters in the intelligent vehicle’s central control screen, based on international design guidelines and standards. The experiment involved 30 participants performing simulated in-vehicle secondary tasks. The result from the experiments shows that the usability of characters increases and the driver’s workload decreases as the characters get larger and shorter. We also propose a set of recommended values for the size and length of Chinese characters in this context. Future work will focus on providing design guidelines for other aspects of HMI design in intelligent vehicles.