Tutorial: How Does Your HMI Design Affect the Visual Attention of the Driver

Abstract

The consideration of driver's visual attention for Human Machine Interface (HMI) design is critical to ensure fast reaction times in unexpected situations and to promote situation awareness in hand-over situations. The effect of an HMI to the attention distribution of the driver can be measured by performing eye-tracking studies in a driving simulator. Performing eye-tracking studies requires functional HMI prototypes but give no insights on the underlying mechanisms for the measured behavior. In the tutorial we introduce a tool-driven and model-based approach to visual attention prediction, which can be performed already based on early HMI mockup ideas and with less effort compared to eye-tracking studies. The tutorial starts with an introduction to the theories of model-based visual attention prediction. Thereafter, participants are invited to either predict the visual attention for their own HMI design ideas or conduct an evaluation of an exemplary use case with the software tools that the participants can install on their computers or use in our lab.