Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
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<strong>and</strong> more of a locked computer system to its everyday<br />
driver/user. What Chalmers <strong>and</strong> MacColl meant with<br />
seamful designs was that the functionality <strong>and</strong> the internal<br />
connections between various parts of a system would be<br />
underst<strong>and</strong>able to users in how they were connected <strong>and</strong> in<br />
some sense why. Very much similar to what Ishii <strong>and</strong><br />
Ullmer wanted with their tangible bits, to make the internal<br />
structure of some system more underst<strong>and</strong>able to its users<br />
so that they if not could help their system connect by<br />
moving the GPS system closer to the window or similarly,<br />
but at least underst<strong>and</strong> why the system at some point in<br />
time was not working as it should.<br />
All this again becomes highly relevant when we now as<br />
interaction systems designers enter the world of wireless<br />
sensor technologies, in the car, <strong>and</strong> elsewhere.<br />
FROM BITS TO MATERIALITY<br />
Another issue we have though when now entering this<br />
new world of digital materials, i.e. mobile sensor<br />
technologies, is that the digital, hardware <strong>and</strong> software,<br />
always has been, but now even more, a very complicated<br />
design material for many designers to work with. As any<br />
other designer, such as textile designers or artists,<br />
interaction systems designers should be able to h<strong>and</strong>le <strong>and</strong><br />
play around with their design material, in their case the<br />
digital, while working out a design in order to make use of<br />
all the potentials that comes with this brilliant material of<br />
digital technologies. At the same time though, it is very<br />
rarely that we see someone perfectly skilled in creative<br />
design <strong>and</strong> hardcore engineering, all embodied into one<br />
person alone. More <strong>and</strong> more common in HCI are therefore<br />
interdisciplinary design teams, where dancers,<br />
psychologists, behavioral scientists <strong>and</strong> others work<br />
together with creative designers <strong>and</strong> engineers developing a<br />
specific design solution together. As HCI experts we can<br />
only guess that the same goes for design teams involved in<br />
car development. As it is not possible to touch or feel<br />
digital materials at any given moment, underst<strong>and</strong>ing<br />
properties <strong>and</strong> potentials of digital materials is a major<br />
challenge for design teams <strong>and</strong> management. Methods <strong>and</strong><br />
tools are needed that enable these interdisciplinary design<br />
teams to work with digital materials as a shared resource<br />
within design innovation. The novel Inspirational Bits<br />
approach [7] is one such method. In this method the<br />
engineers in parallel with the designers conceptual work<br />
develop quick <strong>and</strong> dirty designs in materials that appear<br />
likely to be used. This they do for two reasons, first to<br />
allow themselves to get an underst<strong>and</strong>ing of the design<br />
materials at h<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> their interactional material properties<br />
that cannot be felt <strong>and</strong> thereby not completely<br />
underst<strong>and</strong>able if not set together into a running system.<br />
But also they do this in order to become able to<br />
communicate these properties in a fun, inspiring <strong>and</strong><br />
underst<strong>and</strong>able way to the rest of the design team, for<br />
everyone to become able to use the material properties as<br />
inspiration for the design they develop together. This we<br />
find would be a very interesting method to use in the very<br />
technically advanced material context of the car.<br />
CONCLUSION<br />
To conclude, this rough walk through of some of the issues<br />
concerning the development of gesture <strong>and</strong> movementbased<br />
interaction in HCI we want to state that the car is a<br />
limited physical space <strong>and</strong> as researchers <strong>and</strong> designers in<br />
this design space we need to be very sensitive to the issues<br />
of safety <strong>and</strong> driving. But with that in mind there are great<br />
possibilities here for what more natural user interfaces<br />
involving gestures <strong>and</strong> speech can do towards reducing<br />
driver distraction in certain cases but also towards services<br />
that allow for new bodily experiences in the car. Of course<br />
we do not see a future where the driver or the passengers<br />
will be dancing in cars, but we do see a future with more<br />
bodily experiences in the car, such as the bodily<br />
experiences of singing out load or the bodily experiences of<br />
backseat gaming [2]. But we also see how the HCI<br />
community in general has perhaps a longer history of<br />
discussing issues of movement-based interaction, bodily<br />
experiences <strong>and</strong> material possibilities, which is why we<br />
with this position paper hope to draw attention to some of<br />
these issues for the car research field now to build further<br />
upon, <strong>and</strong> build on from all the great possibilities of the<br />
specifics of the digital materials in the car.<br />
Acknowledgements The financial support by the Federal Ministry of<br />
Economy, Family <strong>and</strong> Youth <strong>and</strong> the National Foundation for Research,<br />
Technology <strong>and</strong> Development is greatly acknowledged (Christian Doppler<br />
Laboratory for Contextual <strong>Interfaces</strong>).<br />
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