Extending Driver-Vehicle Interface Research Into the Mobile Device Commons: Transitioning to (nondriving) passengers and their vehicles

Abstract

For more than a century, driver?vehicle interaction research has been mainly focused on interfaces that assist drivers as they interact with their vehicles with very limited attention paid to interacting with people and their agents moving within the surrounding commons. With the emergence of semiautomated and self-driving vehicles in combination with mobile phones, internal vehicular interfaces will gradually transition to (nondriving) passengers and their vehicles. These newly transitioning interfaces share (or will require) similar specifications to the ones currently used to control many consumer electronics. As mobile devices continue to grow in usage, people are creating secondary interface experiences that are related to but may not be attached to vehicles. It is suggested that future automotive IT infrastructure and interaction specifications should follow from general human?computer interaction guidelines, with the understanding that there will be a high heterogeneity to manage in these contexts. A critical point of vehicle interface is between self-driving cars, manually steered vehicles, and other, so-called vulnerable road users (VRUs), whose attention may also be divided between the road and their mobile phones. When humans, as passengers in semiautomated or automated vehicles, are no longer directly responsible for human?human/interpersonal communication and negotiation, new interactive paradigms must be considered and designed to protect people in manually controlled cars and VRUs within shared road space. Thus, automotive user interface research must also formally extend outward to include intervehicular interaction rather than being limited to the mainly intravehicular environment, as is the present case. In this article, we will examine broader issues of user interface (UI) consistency in vehicular contexts and present recommendations for future automotive UI research.