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Bastian Pfleging, Dagmar Kern, Tanja Doering, Albrecht Schmidt
Reducing Non-Primary Task Distraction in Cars Through Multi-Modal Interaction
It - Information Technology Methoden und innovative Anwendungen der Informatik und Informationstechnik. 54 (4), pp. 179-187, Aug. 2012, ISSN (Print) 1611-2776, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1524/itit.2012.0679. (bib)

To offer access to a multitude of driving and more often non-driving related functions in the car including infotainment, entertainment, comfort, and assistance systems, automotive user interfaces have become more complex in the last decade and this trend will probably continue in the future. Interaction with these systems inevitably leads to driver distraction and consequently to an increased risk for the drivers as well as for their environment. Hence, for some functions interacting while driving is prohibited (like entering an address into the navigation system) whereas other functions are allowed or even need to be operated while driving (like setting speed limit for cruise control). In our research we investigate how interaction styles in automotive user interfaces can be designed in order to limit driver distraction to a minimum. There are two major areas we discuss in this paper: (1) the support for switching attention between interactive systems in the car and the road, and (2) interface technologies in the car that minimize the need for (visual) attention. We describe technological solutions for both areas, explain their implementations and discuss the impact on driving performance, based on results obtained by several simulator studies. The main findings are that multimodality, especially including implicit and explicit interaction, can speed up attention switching and that gestural interaction provides a way to reduce visual demand.