Engineering Optimized Control Panel Designs for Electric Driving

With the rise of electric and connected vehicles and an increased number of automated functions and sensors, the information shown to the driver changes. This contribution presents an engineering approach for designing and optimizing HMI interfaces to enable the driver to quickly be aware of all relevant information. In a study 6 master students in their final year of an HMI automotive design course either applied the engineering approach or used their preferred mix of methods to design a control panel that considers a pre-defined set of information to support three basic tasks: navigation, comfort and energy status. In a subsequent lab study, 27 students were presented with different situations on the designs. Participants should choose an action appropriate to the situation as soon as possible. The response time for the designs created with the engineering approach was 387 ms faster (p=0.015).