Introducing User-in-the-Loop Quantitative Testing into Automotive HMI Development Process

Today, a successful automotive cockpit and HMI design is not only a beautiful and distinctive design, but also a design which reduces driver distraction and cognitive workload. Comfort and safety are at stake. Therefore, for OEMs, there is more and more value in performing quantitative measurements (reaction time, eye sight orientation, pupil diameter, etc.) of user-to-machine interactions. When done at an early development phase, these measurements are helpful in validating or rejecting HMI design concepts. ESG has started an internal project to help OEMs doing so. The project is to develop an HMI prototyping framework which includes all the facilities for bringing a potential user in front of a candidate HMI concept, and measuring how they interact with each other. The framework is able to host a wide variety of HMI prototypes, including multiple screens, innovative input methods and various actuators. After a test campaign is achieved, with several users, the framework enables statistical processing of measurement results, for later analysis (by ergonomists, for instance). ESG has finished the first phase of this project. They are ready to show a proof-of-concept demonstrator of this framework.