From Driving to Quality Time: Deriving User Requirements for Interiors of Highly Automated Vehicles

Abstract

The advent of SAE L4 automated vehicles transforms drivers into passengers, enabling engagement in non-driving related activities (NDRAs) and eliminating traditional interior design constraints. This shift entails new, complex requirements for vehicle interiors to enhance NDRA experiences, crucial for future product differentiation. However, limited knowledge in NDRA-centered interior development introduces significant design uncertainty. How will future interiors look like? This paper, as part of the KAI project (Bonerz et al., 2023), shall help car concept developers answer this question. It aims at reducing aforementioned uncertainties and high error costs in the concept phase of an interior. In order to ensure a high level of user acceptance, reliable user requirements and layout recommendations for the definition of vehicle interiors of tomorrow are needed. For generating these, the authors propose a method. This paper details the methodical approach taken for analysis of a Co-Creation study (CC) described in (Satrio et al., 2022) and shows exemplary specific results. The study was conducted in 2022 with 30 users, each covering four NDRAs in two travel scenarios. In this, participants expressed their needs by arranging component placeholders in an interior mock-up. The datasets were numerically and geometrically analyzed to identify NDRA specific interior arrangements. Criteria evaluated included configuration and number of seats, required components, their positioning, and criteria of visibility and reachability. The study revealed that NDRAs significantly influence preferred vehicle interior layouts, affecting the number of passengers, interior components, and seat configurations. The CC provides valuable insights into user motivations, and the interpretation helps translating the given information into user requirements and layout recommendations, which serve as a foundation for NDRA-centered interiors. As vehicle automation evolves, such methods are crucial to ensure interior design meets changing user requirements and technological advancements.

Keywords: Co-Creation, Automated Driving, Non-driving Related Activities, Car Interior

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005538