UX research for autonomous vehicles: Focusing on interaction with mobile device
Authors: lee Minhee , Lee Younjoon 
Published: October 2023

Since starting to launch the autonomous driving vehicle service to the public, customer experience has also emerged as an important factor for the services. Beyond simply considering the interaction between users and machines, this study seeks to simultaneously study another element that cannot be ruled out., with the aim of providing a satisfactory experience for the customer in terms of service. Self-driving taxis are a new service, but users will expect a continuous experience based on the experience they have learned from similar services. The existing similar experience is based on three services or technologies: shared vehicle service, on-call taxi service, and semi-autonomous driving experience. One touchpoint that cannot be ruled out from these three previous experiences is the link to the mobile phone. Customers who experience cutting-edge technology are all power users of mobile phones and shared vehicle services and on-call taxi services are based on mobile phone applications and location information. Most drivers carry mobile phones while driving, connect mobile phones with vehicles, and obtain information and content from them. This study aims at natural UI linkage between mobile phones and self-driving cars for superior customer experience.2. Research Methods The study includes three main steps; first, interview and observe iOS and Android users. Each user's observations detail the user's journey from vehicle entry to departure and organize the features. At this time, the main goal of the analysis is to separate only the user's journey, which is equivalent to an autonomous driving scenario, and to check which content subjects are mainly used by iOS' CarPlay services and Android Auto. Experiment with two major mobile phone platform users to avoid being biased toward a specific mobile phone platform.The second step is to experiment with fast and dirty prototyping techniques. The previous analysis defines and embodies the user's journey to the future automotive experience. The subjects experience this prototyping as it is and analyze the process. Intensive research has been conducted into the subject's mobile phone interworking process, but this part is not specified directly to the subject. This is to make sure that users naturally expect to connect to their mobile phones. It is analyzed what subjects who are familiar with the existing user experience of cars and mobile phones expect and expect from self-driving vehicles.The final stage is co-creation. Its goal is to create an interface that will satisfy customers regarding situations in which mobile phones and vehicle systems are linked by predicting their experiences. Assuming that the subject is connected to a terminal and a self-driving car, it writes the contents of the vehicle system directly. Based on the results of this process, we will derive a UI that will satisfy the users.3. Results The experiment was conducted on users who were familiar with driving cars and using mobile phones. To increase the likelihood of accepting future technologies, limit subjects to those familiar with existing experiences.The first test was able to analyze the experience of cars linked to mobile phones. Subjects naturally accept and use mobile phones as an integral part of their car-related experiences.In the second experiment, we were able to analyze the initial feelings of users related to autonomous vehicles. The subjects had a vague sense of uneasiness about cutting-edge technology that they had yet to experience in real life. Under these circumstances, they wanted to get additional information from their mobile phones and offset their anxiety.The third experiment resulted in the user experience that current drivers hoped for in future cars. In the context of the vehicle's software system interworking with the mobile phone, what factors users value was identified and the rules of customer experience focused on these factors were derived.4. Conclusions This paper aimed to make sure that users naturally expect mobile phone links in future car situations and to suggest optimized interfaces when linking mobile phones. This is not just a definition of a machine-to-person interface, but a basic study to design the customer experience in terms of the future automotive service industry.Subjects were found to expect future services based on similar existing experiences, and anxiety about the technology of autonomous driving was also found in common. On the service side, subjects reacted sensitively to the processing of personal information in shared vehicle situations. The study has an academic implication that it has drawn a major direction in how mobile communication devices, the most cutting-edge technology for current users, should be linked to self-driving vehicles, the most advanced technology in the future.