Product-User Interaction Design in Vehicle : Focused on Development of a New Interaction Technique and Input Device

Manipulating an IVIS (In-Vehicle Information System) while driving is a secondary task and disturbs the driver’s visual attention and makes him/her distracted, so there is a need of a new approach other than the existing ones. This study aims to propose a new interaction technique and input device in an attempt to help improve the interaction between in-vehicle products and users. The proposed new interaction technique is designed to create body awareness by displaying a pseudo-finger image at the cursor’s position and called the RemoteFinger. It separates button selection step from execution of command using a mechanical switch and a touchpad with absolute coordinates input. In short, the new interaction technique is a method of combining the physical properties of a touch screen and the tracking properties of a mouse. In this study, we created three different prototypes which are called the PointerPad. They were implementation of the novel interaction technique and tested in comparison with an existing touch screen in terms of usability. The test results showed that there was no difference between devices in the length of task execution time but the number of collisions decreased during the given task. In in-vehicle interaction, eye-fix time is more important than task execution time. More collisions in the given primary task at the test mean a longer eye-fix time. The PointerPad which features the RemoteFinger for the new interaction technique showed no difference from the touch screen in task execution time but produced a significant decrease in the number of collisions. This suggests that the RemoteFinger contributed to reducing distractions upon IVIS manipulation while driving, as compared to the existing touch screen.