Design of a flexible speedometer-display for new types of
driver information

Abstract: The project was started to handle the problem with the increasing amount of
information that is being presented to the driver of a car. To cope with
this problem and to focus the work the task was to develop, improve and
reflect on the functions linked with the speedometer in a car. The
purpose and aim of the thesis became to investigate how this could be done
in the best way using a graphical display.

The work started of with extensive research and information gathering
through literature, articles and interviews. When enough theory had been
gathered the next step was to choose functions that should handled and then
ranking them to see the most important once. The ranking was done
through a series of function weighing tables that compared the different
functions to each other. After the functions had been ranked, methods were
chosen to help with the concept generation. A number of idea stimulating
methods were chosen and some concepts were created. Four concepts
were chosen out of the lot for further development and a following
evaluation.

The evaluation was done with a number of interviewed people to see which
ideas that should be implemented and further evaluated. With the result from
the evaluation a decision was made to create two new concepts by combining
all the positive commented functions from the different concepts in the
first evaluation. The concepts were created and a number of new ideas were
tested in them as well.

A larger and more exhaustive evaluation of the two concepts was then made
with a larger number of interviewed. The results and comments from this
evaluation was then compiled and analyzed. The evaluation gave an insight on
how people thought about different functions and why. The compilation was
then used to create a final recommendation of some points to consider when
designing a fully-graphical display to use in cars.

Some results among others were that the tachometer should be optional even
though many people want it. The speed info function was liked by everyone
but has to be discrete and the speedometer should be analogue even thou a
small digital backup does not hurt.