Safe and Sound Drive · Design of a serious game for cars to help increase driver skills and lower fuel consumption

Design of a serious game for cars to help increase driver skills and lower fuel consumption

New in-vehicle information systems and advanced driver assistance systems are currently being introduced in cars in order to help driving safely and energy efficiently. These systems help the driver to pay attention to critical events (e.g. collision warnings and blind spot information systems) or deliver important information (e.g. speed limits and navigation instructions). However, safety and environmental impact are most of all dependent on the behaviour and attitude of the driver. Mobile apps and games have been suggested as means to affect behaviour and attitudes, and there are already some mobile applications available for Android and Apple platforms, such as FuelLog, EcoDrive, Efficiency, and GoDriveGreen. However, none of these are designed for interaction during driving. Sound based interaction is a way to facilitate continuous interaction with the driver during driving, without preventing the driver from keeping the gaze on the road. The Safe and Sound Drive project concerned the design of an audio-only serious game for cars that helps drivers to increase eco-driving skills and encourage safe and environmentally friendly approaches to driving. The design process was influenced by industrial design methodology and user-centred agile methods. Game engine technology and audio middleware were used for rapid prototyping. Sounds were made interactive by actively controlling them based on driving behaviour, and were designed to help and encourage a stable and suitable speed. User feedback was collected at an early stage through contextual enquiry sessions during real driving. Later, the system was showcased at two science festivals, where over 400 attendees test drove a game simulator. The agile design process provided continuous feedback to the project team, and guided the design of a version of the game that was evaluated in a simulator experiment. The results from the user studies suggest that opinions about beeps and audio signals vary among subjects whereas music and podcast based contents were generally better received. Alteration of media content by actively adjusting spectral balance or music mix formed working mechanisms for providing cues easily understood by participants. However, the effects on energy efficient behaviour were moderate, suggesting that visual information dominated the determination of the participants’ behaviour in the experiment. The project demonstrated that continuous interactive sounds can be used for influencing driver behaviour. It was further shown that sounds can be designed to be intuitively understood and easily explained. Even though the participants found the game interesting and fun, there was a reluctance to use this kind of media based interactive sounds during real driving. This highlights one of the major challenges for designing the future interactive sounds in cars – to design sounds and interfaces that are appealing and desired by future drivers. Although the demonstrated effects were moderate and the concepts developed in the project generally were not preferred over only visual feedback, the results provide valuable knowledge for further development of interactive sounds for user interfaces in cars in general, and for eco-coaching in particular. The ideas will be further explored in future studies of interactive sounds, and a study of interactive sounds for eco-coaching based on active noise control in trucks is already planned in cooperation between Scania, Luleå University of Technology and Interactive Institute Swedish ICT, financed by the Swedish Energy Agency. Software developed in the Safe and Sound Drive project will be used for further development and evaluation of sound based and multisensory user interfaces in vehicles. Contacts between Luleå University of Technology and Anglia Ruskin University are well established, and further collaboration is planned. The results were disseminated through participation in conferences, publication of conference papers, demonstrations at two science festivals (Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015 and Cambridge Science Festival 2016), a demonstration at school event (My Smarter Essex, Chelmsford 2016), workshops with Volvo Car Corporation and discussions with Scania trucks. Outcomes of the project have also been disseminated through regular blog, Twitter and Facebook posts. The demonstration software can and will be used for future demonstrations at science festivals, science centres and other popular science events. Parts of the methods developed in the project are already implemented in Volvo Car Corporation’s design procedures for interactive sounds and will be implemented at Scania through the planned continuation project.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union