Further development and testing of an in-vehicle interaction concept for text input

Abstract: Many young drivers are texting while driving today, this result in a detrimental effect on safety-critical driving tasks such as lane-keeping, hazard detection and the detection and appropriate response to traffic signs. (Breen, 2009)A Swedish study estimated that around 10 to 20 people die annually in Sweden as a result of using a mobile phone while driving. (Breen, 2009)
The master’s thesis project focused on design and evaluation of an existing draft concept for in-vehicle text input system. The system was a gesture based interaction method and considered as a separate function to the multimedia interface and therefore not affected by the rest of the in-vehicle multimedia system. The concept was further developed with the goal to get closer to implementation in an in-vehicle information system. The aim of the project was to develop the existing Interaction concept for text input to a fully functional prototype and evaluate the concept in a driving simulator.
The development process used for this master thesis was based on the Interaction design development process described in Interaction Design beyond Human-computer interaction (Preece, Rogers & Sharp, 2011, pp.331-332) with adjustments conducted to accommodate the process for this project. The process is divided into four main steps; Establishing requirements, Designing alternatives, prototyping and evaluating. The process was iterative and intended to be performed in cycles of iterations. The project was carried out in four iterations.
The concept generated in iteration 4 named Smart Swipe II was tested in a user test performed in a driving simulator. The test took place at Volvos HMI Lab in Gothenburg between 2/5-9/5 2012 and 20 people were participating. The concept was compared to another text input concept as a reference. The two concepts were evaluated according to safety, user experience and usability (efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction).
The results from the driving simulator test were summarized and the objective readings were analyzed in a t-test with support from the Microsoft office program Excel. The results from the objective and subjective evaluation show that Smart Swipe II was better than the reference concept according to safety, satisfaction and user experience. Worth notice was that no results were significant (significant level 0.05) and only showed indications of that Smart Swipe II was overall a better concept.
Smart Swipe II was not further developed after the driving simulator test, but some design ideas of how to further develop the concept were created. The concept developed was a totally new interaction concept for text input and therefore a bit hard to learn for some users. With the goal to facilitate the learning process a concept of a game was created to gamify the learning process.
Smart Swipe II was in the end of the project a fully functional concept with good potential to become a good text input system. The system might be an efficient way of interaction in the rest in of the infotainment system too. There is also a potential to use Smart Swipe II in mobile phones in the future of gesture based text input.