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• Development of Human Factors Guidelines for Advanced Traveler Information Systems and Commercial Vehicle Operations: Comparable Systems Analysis

Development of Human Factors Guidelines for Advanced Traveler Information Systems and Commercial Vehicle Operations: Comparable Systems Analysis

Entering Information

Pre–Drive Information

Pre–drive information was entered via the touchscreen menu system. A questionnaire rating of the usability of the TravTek main menu is shown in figure 36. As shown, the menu was rated quite positively by users. A touchscreen keypad (figure 37) was utilized to create a saved destination list and to input destinations by street, intersection, or complete address. As shown in the figure, this keypad had multiple letters per soft key, and required two button presses for each letter. This design was necessitated by the constraints of the existing 25–key keypad arrangement. As shown in the figure, ease of use was rated somewhat lower (although still positively) in comparison to many of the TravTek functions and features. Although this arrangement was usable, clearly a single–letter–per–key keypad would be even more so.

In–Transit Information

While in–transit, only the steering wheel buttons were accessible to the driver. The questionnaire rating of the usability of these controls appears as figure 38. As shown, the steering wheel buttons were rated higher than most other functions and features, and quite highly overall. Previous research has shown the value of steering wheel buttons for ease of use and relatively low attention demand. It is apparent that these results generalize to ATIS applications.