0000000000281514
AUTHOR
Annegret Lasch
Visual-manual in-car tasks decomposed: text entry and kinetic scrolling as the main sources of visual distraction
Distraction effects of in-car tasks with a touch screen based navigation system user interface were studied in a driving simulator experiment with eye tracking. The focus was to examine which particular in-car task components visually distract drivers the most. The results indicate that all of the visual-manual in-car tasks led to increased levels of experienced demands and to lower driving speeds. The most significant finding was that text entry and kinetic scrolling of lists were the main sources of visual distraction whereas simple selection tasks with familiar target locations led to least severe distraction effects.
On the Visual Distraction Effects of Audio-Visual Route Guidance
This is the first controlled quantitative analysis on the visual distraction effects of audio-visual route guidance in simulated, but ecologically realistic driving scenarios with dynamic maneuvers and self-controlled speed (N = 24). The audio-visual route guidance system under testing passed the set verification criteria, which was based on drivers’ preferred occlusion distances on the test routes. There were no significant effects of an upcoming maneuver instruction location (up, down) on the in-car display on any metric or on the experienced workload. The drivers’ median occlusion distances correlated significantly with median incar glance distances. There was no correlation between driv…
Critical Analysis on the NHTSA Acceptance Criteria for In-Vehicle Electronic Devices
We tested a commercial in-car navigation system prototype against the NHTSA criteria for acceptance testing of in-vehicle electronic devices, in order to see what types of in-car tasks fail the acceptance test and why. In addition, we studied the visual demands of the driving scenario recommended by NHTSA for task acceptance testing. In the light of the results, NHTSA guidelines and acceptance criteria need to be further developed. In particular visual demands of the driving scenario and for different simulators need to be standardized in order to enable fair testing and comparable test results. We suggest the visual occlusion method for finding a driving scenario that corresponds better wi…
Designing browsing for in-car music player
User interface features of a touch based mobile music player and their comparative impact on driver distraction when searching music albums were investigated. In a driving simulator experiment (N=18) three scrolling methods buttons, swipe and kinetic were compared, whereat the number of music tracks presented in a list-style format varied between three, five and seven items per page. Half of the participants used the music player in a portrait mode and half of them in a landscape mode. It was expected that swipe supports less severe distraction effects than kinetic or button due to systematic page-by-page scrolling and low levels of pointing accuracy required for browsing. Three items shoul…