Computer-Aided Usability Evaluation of In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems. (September 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Feng, Fred; Liu, Yili; Chen, Yifan; Filev, Dimitar; To, Curtis
• Is Part Of: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society ... Annual Meeting. Volume 58:Part 1(2014)
• Page Start: 2285
• Page End: 2289
• Publication Date: 2014-09
• Subjects: Human engineering -- Congresses; 620.8205
• DOI: 10.1177/1541931214581476
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1541-9312

Abstract

This paper reports the development of a computer-aided engineering (CAE) software for human machine interface (HMI) designers to predict and benchmark the usability of in-vehicle infotainment systems. At the front end of the software a graphic user interface (GUI) was developed that allows HMI designers to create digital mockups of designs and setup the tasks for simulation. At the back end a digital driver was created for simulating the driver cognition and performance based on the cognitive architecture of QN-MHP (Queuing Network-Model Human Processor). The software is able to simulate a driver performing in-vehicle secondary tasks (e.g., tuning radios) while steering a vehicle, make quantitative predictions of the driver's task performance and workload. To validate the software outputs, an experiment was conducted on a driving simulator with two typical in-vehicle infotainment systems (a physical panel and a touch screen), and a radio tuning task was used as a test case. The results show that the software is able to generate task performance and workload estimates that are similar to the empirical data from human participants.