Pet-Like Interactive Dashboard towards Emotional Electric Vehicle

ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16)

Co-Author

Research on electric vehicle (EV) has focused on technological issues, such as energy, physical structure and self-driving. It is important to consider how to enhance emotional user experience for the new generation of EV. In this paper, we propose a vehicle-applicable pet-morphic design strategy and a concept validation prototype, ‘DooBoo’ to support an emotional user experience of a personal EV. DooBoo is a pet-like dashboard system that applies the interactive characteristics of pet dogs. We illustrate three key potential scenarios: personal security, safe driving assistance, and vehicle information guidance. The preliminary user feedback showed the possibility of helping emotional driving experience with EV; they felt togetherness as it is another passenger, affection with the vehicle could grow, and it offered means of intuitive and visceral communication. We discuss implications of our prototype and study results for guiding emotional interactions with EV.

Electric Vehicle, Smart Car, Interaction Design for Cars, Pet-Morphism, Car Dashboard Design