How important are the attributes of car cockpits? What are the preferred input modalities for in-car interfaces?

A survey undertaken at a national car trade fair in 2010 covers these two important aspects for the automotive cockpit system.

Interestingly the main finding is that pragmatic qualities are estimated by survey participants as more important than hedonic qualities for car cockpits. Moreover the case study that resulted from this survey shows that  steering wheel remote controls were the preferred input modality in cars.

The survey was conducted at a three day car trade fair which was visited by more than 25.000 people. In total 113 visitors took part in the survey with 92 valid cases for data analysis.

Participants were asked to rate 14 attributes which were chosen following the concept established by Hassenzahl [1], who claims that users assign speci c adjectives to the pragmatic (PQ) or the hedonic quality (HQ) of a system. Results are shown in Figure 1.

Further details can be found in the total overview of the study, available as a free download here: Automotive Cockpit Systems.