Reimagining In-car UX Pt. 2: Designing for Anxiety
In the first part of this series, I aimed at reimagining the instrument cluster of automobiles by specifically trying to tackle the problem of distraction while driving — my idea was to have nifty controls that helped drivers achieve simple tasks without having to take their hands off the wheel.
With more exploration, research and talking to people who are rather new to driving, I uncovered some major insights that led me to designing for driver anxiety.
What is driver anxiety?
People who are on the edge about their driving performance because of their lack of confidence, uncertainty about road conditions, unfamiliar routes, technological distraction or poor driving skills. This anxiety while driving arises when people encounter some sort of an accident (not necessarily lethal) in their initial phase of learning or any experience that evokes fear in them while driving. This leads to a situation where they make one mistake, and that goes onto being a snowballing effect where they continue committing multiple errors — this in turn completely shatters their confidence and are hence prone to more accidents on the road.
My process of arriving at designing of anxiety included three contextual inquiries and four semi-structured interviews to understand and get a general feel of how new drivers reacted to situations on roads and how it impacted them mentally.
Contextual Inquiries
To get an understanding of a driver’s emotions and behavior while driving, I conducted multiple contextual inquiries. Usabilitybok defines contextual inquiry as A semi-structured interview method to obtain information about the context of use, where users are first asked a set of standard questions and then observed and questioned while they work in their own environments.
To get into people’s shoes, understand their behavior and emotions while they perform the activity of driving, I decided to synthesize my findings by creating persona empathy maps that related to the very specific people whom I observed. These personas are direct correlations to people who were shadowed while driving.
Synthesis
Based on the pain-points observed from the interviews and contextual-inquiries, I created an affinity diagram of problems associated with driving. My understanding from the affinity diagramming was that —
- Confusion causes anxiety.
- Poor driving skills causes anxiety.
- The need to multi-task while driving causes anxiety.
- Poor observation on the road causes confusion, which in turns causes anxiety.
Anxiety while driving causes irritation, distraction and errors while driving
This insight led me to ask myself these two questions —
How to make the driving experience less anxious?
How to provide a calming environment while driving?
Reducing phone distraction
Auto DND
Having to look at attend phone calls while driving, addressing notifications or the constant beeping of the mobile could be quite anxiety causing, specifically if the driver is new to driving. Imagine if your phone could change into a drive mode that aggregates the different notifications for later viewing and automatically puts the phone on Do not disturb as it realizes the phone’s owner is driving.
Contextual Apps
Android Auto and Apple Car Play are trying to build a system within cars where apps are optimized for in-car usage. What if only driving-relevant apps could be used on a drive mode? This would reduce anxiety to a great extent where the driver is quite unaware about his retweets, photo comments or likes on his latest profile picture. This helps in prioritizing the important actions within a car and does not let the driver get distracted by notifications that are not relevant while driving. This interesting article from Intercom talks about Designing Smart Notifications, and a similar approach could be taken to reduce the amount of information presented to the driver.
Auto Response
Voice mails have existed for a real long time, but what if this response could be taken to another level where the system knows the context when a person is being called. What if Kate calls John, the system knows that John is driving, responds automatically letting Kate know that John is driving and that he would return the call once he is done driving. This creates a safer ecosystem by letting the caller know the importance of having the attention on the road while driving. This would reduce anxiety for drivers who cannot multi-task while driving.
Alleviating anxiety about the unknown
Assistive Panel
We have seen heads-up-display (HUD) concepts, big 17 inch central consoles and other concepts where there are interfaces that act as an information center or a control center — there are very few designs out there which are assistive in nature — Tesla’s auto-parking, reversing aids etc are a few examples to be named. But what if this could be taken to the next level? What if there could be an assistive panel that helps drivers not just to park but also assist with signage on the roads, help with finding parking spots, rerouting based on traffic conditions (Google already does this with maps).
This assistive panel has to be placed in a vehicle such that it does not require the driver to take her eyes off the road, but still is visible with very minimal eye movement. This requires the console to be placed in such a manner that it is slightly inclined towards the driver. Honda Civic achieves this with a very slight tilt.
Traffic-Aware Proactive Systems
In this concept, there are two aspects —
- Systems that learn with time the driver’s habit of leaving to a particular location and suggests alternatives based on traffic conditions.
- Proactive systems that do not require drivers to completely talk/voice-control but instead prompts answers which are essentially just a Yes/No response.
The reason for minimal voice interaction with a system roots back to a lot of research that indicate that completely voice controlled systems are just as distractive, if not more, as using a phone while driving.
Parking Assistants
On-demand
There is a lot of anxiety caused while driving for people who are trying to find parking in places that are new to them, or in even really crowded areas. On-demand parking could be a way for the driver to nudge the car to find parking nearby.
Auto-Suggestive
As a driver navigates to a particular location, the system can prompt to aid in finding a parking spot nearby. This alleviates a lot of anxiety as the driver knows that she is going to find parking nearby and the car is going to help her with that.
Road Signage
Drivers new to an environment often tend to miss signs on the road especially when certain signs are placed in deceptive areas which are easy to be missed. An assistive system would aid in helping the driver know where stop signs are, which roads are one-ways, where one has to yield, and where one could turn on red. To take this to the next level, imagine a future where the cars could communicate with each other. The concept below shows an integrated system there is a clear indication of which car has to move forward at a Stop sign.
Visual Relevancy
The assistive panel should be designed such that the relevancy of information decreases from left to right (right to left for countries that have right-hand drive). The most visible portion (to the driver) of the screen should contain information pertaining to the assistance provided by the system, warning symbols, maps, parking spot availability and other less important information such as music control, phone control etc to be placed at the farther end of the screen. This visual relevancy of information has been well-adopted in Tesla’s latest Model 3 that boasts just a 15 inch screen without an instrument cluster. The lack of an instrument cluster though is still quite disconcerting.
Designing for the transition
Self-driving cars are here, but not compeltely. Cars would soon be driving themselves and would require very minimal human intervention. This shift though is going to be slow and progressive, and it is imperative to design for this transition. There still is going to be interaction with the console, the car would still be driven by humans for most portion of the travel, and there still is room for human error due to distraction and poorly designed systems. In an attempt to design for this transition, I conceptualized a system called Proactive Assistive Panels (PAP) which I would write in detail about in my next article of this series that aims at improving the in-car UX.
Part one of the in-car UX series — Reimagining the Instrument Cluster
