Automotive interfaces are becoming ever more complicated and challenging to use, adding to the many demands on driver attention and increasing risks on the road. This seminar will present the results and lessons learned from an unusual project to design an innovative multimodal, multimedia automotive interface for the next generation of cars. Driven by a combination of safety-critical concerns and aesthetics, an interdisciplinary design team devised a distinctive design emphasizing both style and simplified interaction with strong visual design. The objective was to enable faster, more straightforward completion of common tasks with reduced distraction and lower mental demands for the driver/user. Because of very limited budget and an extremely compressed design and development schedule, an unconventional interaction design approach was taken, based on agile model-driven methods. Features of the prototype will be demonstrated and the design process will be explained.

Bio:
Larry Constantine, IDSA, is a Professor at the University of Madeira and an industrial designer specializing in interaction design for safety-critical applications, such as medical informatics and industrial automation. He teaches in the joint CMU-UMa MHCI program and heads Lab:USE, the Laboratory for Usage-centered Software Engineering. He is a Fellow of the ACM and has been named as a recipient of the Stevens Award.

Web:
http://www.foruse.com/