The Steering Wheel: A Design Space Exploration

Abstract

The steering wheel is—besides pedals for acceleration and breaking—the most prominent interaction artifact between drivers and their vehicles. All cars have a steering wheel, which translates steering instructions from drivers to cars. “Eyes on the road and hands on the wheel!” is one of the most prominent paradigms in the automotive world. The driver should always have a grip of the steering wheel, making it also the most reachable area in the car for manual interaction. Automotive interaction designers have, rightly, used the area on and around the steering wheel to position interaction elements beyond steering. Today’s cars are cluttered with buttons and switches to operate the car’s information and entertainment system. New interaction modes, such as touch screens on the steering wheel or shape changing rims offer interaction designers new perspectives on utilizing the steering wheel, as a means for interaction with the vehicle. In this chapter, we describe the design space steering wheels offer for interaction beyond steering the vehicle. We collect and analyze various approaches from industry and academia on human-steering wheel interaction beyond traditional interaction and infer potentials and risks when utilizing such novel modalities in terms of interaction design. This analysis leads to a thorough discussion of the steering wheel interaction design space, resulting in related interaction design recommendations. Finally, we provide a look into the future when evermore advanced driving assistance systems pervade the car, eventually relieving the driver from the steering task with the emergence of autonomous vehicles.