"Dad, Stop Crashing My Car!"

Abstract

In order to envision novel in-car user interfaces, it is important to investigate driver and passenger behavior as well as to identify relevant context factors that influence this behavior. Automotive user interfaces are often concentrated on drivers and their needs, whereas passengers and their needs are paid little attention to. In this paper we report on a probing study, which aimed at revealing novel design ideas for interfaces for both, car drivers and passengers. The overall goal of the study was to get inspired by actual driver and passenger behavior. In particular, we investigated past behaviors and what we can learn from these episodes for automotive interface design. We illustrate the user-centered process of generating innovative design concepts for the automotive domain based on the results of the probing study. Additionally, we introduce three resulting design concepts by means of design sketches and textual descriptions to provide insights on the concrete results of our efforts. We discuss probing as a method to generate novel design ideas for the automotive UI community and reflect on the three emerged design concepts which focus on collaboration, behavior change, and entertainment in the car.