How to Involve Psychophysiology in the Field of Transportation: Recent Contributions to an Applied Psychophysics Problem

Abstract

Especially in the field of transportation many facets of human factors should be considered. Many of them can profit from the inclusion of psychophysiological methods. Thinking about well-designed and high-quality products that have the possibility to inspire customers, leads to the problem that subjective sound impression cannot easily be described by technical parameters. To connect customer requirements and technical specifications, subjective assessments of experts and/or customers are widely used. But subjective assessments are mostly not enough to uncover small quality differences between sounds. Therefore, a multidimensional approach that combines subjective assessments, objective physical parameters of the sounds and psychophysiological measures should be used for investigations. Results of a first investigation with in-vehicle sounds show that a multidimensional approach can support product development and can be seen as possibility to involve human factors in the highly technical environment of transportation. This method can be also usable in other areas of product development in the field of transportation. So, further research should be considered to investigate the use of a multidimensional approach in these areas too.

Keywords: Human Factors, Psychophysiology, Multidimensional Approach, Sound Quality

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100644