Text-based information design for in-vehicle displays: A systematic review

Abstract

Reading short texts at a brief glance behaviour has been increasing, especially in the in-vehicle interface of the multitask context of driving. This behaviour led to a change in the approach of preparing and designing in-car information. Consequently, understanding the current status of existing design principles is necessary for designers to find the appropriate solution for text presentation on the in-vehicle display under driving conditions. Thus, the present study conducts a systematic review of text-based information design for in-vehicle displays. A total of 1,495 studies (1980–2022) were screened, and 360 emerged for full-text review; 27 studies met the inclusion criteria, including journal articles concerning the design of text-based information for in-vehicle displays involving text design and the effect on safe driving or reducing workload and distraction. The results were summarised in three themes of literature: existing design guidelines, design factors, and evaluation methodology. The existing guidelines and recommendations focus on the physical presence of text (modality, location, colour, typeface, font size), with few recommendations on the linguistic presence of the text (message style and message length). The discussion and future work section enables further work on developing usable and safe informational text displays on the in-vehicle interface and other short glance reading engagements.