Comparison of the usability of a car infotainment system in a mixed reality environment and in a real car

Instead of installing new control modes for infotainments systems in a real vehicle for testing, it is an attractive idea (saving time and cost) to evaluate and develop these systems in a mixed reality (MR) environment. The central question of the study is whether the usability evaluation of a car entertainment system within a MR environment provides the same results as the evaluation of the car entertainment system within a real car. For this purpose a prototypical car infotainment system was built and integrated into a real car and into a MR environment. The MR environment represents the interior of the car and uses finger tracking and real haptic control elements of the center console of a car. Two test groups were assigned to the two different test environments. The study shows, that the usability is rated similar in both environments although readability and representation within the infotainment system is problematic.