The Impact of Content Temporality and Modality in Automotive User Interface on Trust and Comfort

Abstract

The manner an HMI presents information can affect a user's experience in highly automated vehicles. This online experimental study analyzed how informing participants of future or current events and vehicle behaviors in various modalities affected trust and comfort. We observed that presenting users with information about upcoming road events and vehicle maneuvers lead to greater user trust and comfort, but only when also alerting users about the immediately occurring events. Psychological and human-robot interaction theories provided explanations for why a combination of current and future alerts may result in higher user trust. Understanding how content temporality impacts the individual has design implications that may potentially lead to an increased partnership and optimized interaction between a person and their highly automated vehicle.