Case study: A safety and usability evaluation of two different carphone designs

This paper presents a case study of a comprehensive evaluation methodology to compare to types of carphone design. In this study a traditional phone interface was compared to a 'satellite' interface design which moved the controls to the hand position near the wheel and moved the visual display higher on the dashboard in line with the driver forward sight line. Evaluation measures were based on subjective and objective data related to ease of learning, usability and safety. The evaluation indicated that whereas there was no unanimous advantage for the new system across all measures, the design of the 'satellite' system was preferred to the traditional design and had a greater safety benefit in terms of a reduction of total 'eyes-off-road' time. The results of the evaluation are discussed in terms of the applied methodology.