Steering Away from Automotive HMI De Facto Standards – The Effect on Control Discoverability

Automotive manufacturers are continually looking for a competitive edge which may include implementing novel user interface solutions. This research aimed to understand how novel location and control type impacts on the discoverability of vehicle functions. Participants were asked to complete visual search tasks in two virtual vehicle interiors (wearing a virtual reality headset) where control types and their locations either met the de facto industry standard or did not. The tasks were repeated four times for each interior. Results showed that the mean search time and number of errors were higher when the control type or location did not align with the de facto standard. Furthermore, a novel location was found to have a greater impact on search time. However, the number of errors was greater when searching for a novel control type. The findings suggest moving away from de facto standards should be carefully considered by automotive manufacturers.