Development of an Evaluation Method for Driver Vehicle Interaction

Sammanfattning: The master’s thesis was performed in collaboration with the department responsible for the driver vehicle interaction at Scania CV AB. The interaction between the driver and the vehicle contributes to the usability and overall experience of the product as well as to safety. In order to create a good interaction it is important to evaluate it. The purpose of the thesis work was therefore to develop an evaluation method that could be used throughout the design process to evaluate the driver vehicle interaction experience related to trucks and buses. The thesis work focused on expert evaluations rather than user tests. Investigations of what factors should be evaluated, how the factors should be evaluated and when in the design process the evaluation should be carried out were conducted. Literature studies and interviews with employees at Scania were performed, which resulted in the selection of factors to be evaluated as well as the specific context-of-use. A list of criteria for evaluation was compiled and translated into Key Performance Indicators to be measured. These laid the foundation for the selection of suitable evaluation methods as well as for the development of evaluation frameworks and recommendations for each selected evaluation method. The frameworks were tested on employees at Scania and refined accordingly. In addition, a case study was conducted with the purpose to evaluate an ongoing project at Scania with the new frameworks. The final result of the thesis work is a selection of nine evaluation methods that should be used to evaluate the driver vehicle interaction. The proposal of the evaluation methods consists of four evaluation frameworks and recommendations regarding five evaluation methods. All evaluation methods are based on the Key Performance Indicators that derive from the selection of factors to be evaluated, namely pleasurability, task focus and flexibility. The majority of the methods should be conducted by experts and the remaining require user tests. The evaluation methods should be executed during different stages of the design process depending on the required product representation.