Part II: Initial Prototype and Evaluation Plan The Sonopticon Project

PROJECT DESCRIPTION | DESIGN CRITERIA | DESIGN PROTOTYPE | EVALUATION PLAN | APPENDIX

Design Description and Storyboards

Sonopticon Logo
"It sounds like 20/20!"


Note: the storyboard
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RealVideo player.


"In the United States, cars are required to be designed so that if the door is opened while the keys are in the ignition, a warning sound comes on. In theory, if you walk away from your car, leaving the keys in the ignition, the buzzer will call you back. Yet the signal must be ignored as often as it must be attended to. It must be ignored when you open the door of your car while the engine is running so you can hand someone something. On these occasions it is annoying; you know the door is open. And sometimes you want to or need to leave the keys in the car. There goes the buzzer -- it can't distinguish deliberate actions from erroneous ones."

Donald Norman, "The Design of Everyday Things"

Don Norman never tried Sonopticon ...
Project Description top

The focus of our project is to provide a system that will enhance the visual and auditory cues provided by an automobile. The primary goal is to increase travel safety by providing the driver with information that is currently unavailable to him/her through sight and sound. Additionally, our system with enhance current cues provided to the driver but may be easily ignored.

A system designed to aid the driver should address the roll of sound in the driving 'experience'. Many times drivers are unaware of the auditory signals around them while driving due to interference from either road noise or the radio. We propose additional subsystems to compensate for these distractions. The first would be the installation of an active noise cancellation device. Since the 'white' noise produced by the road and air is some what constant, the production of sound waves 180 degrees out of phase would cancel out the unwanted noise. Such a system has already been designed and implemented in some commercial propeller commuter airplanes.

The second auditory subsystem would be a 'smart mixer'. This device would regulate the sound of the radio with important sounds on the exterior of the automobile. In order to ensure that the driver can hear approaching emergency vehicles, once detected the radio would lower and 'pipe in' the siren to the audio system. Since the automobile will installed with a surround sound system, the siren would be directional within the car so the driver would know which direction the emergency vehicle was approaching.

No matter how well a car is designed, there is one flaw that all automobiles share: blind spots. Our system will compensate for this by alerting the driver that an object is currently in the drivers blind spot. Low power dispersed lasers would be mounted to the car (perhaps in the wheel wells) to detect objects within a given distance. If another car is in a blind spot, a visual cue would be given to the driver. An additional auditory signal would be produced if the driver were to indicate his/her intention to move in that direction (turn signal, current gear, etc.).

Design Criteria top

The primary design goal is produce an extremely robust interface that will provide the user with possibly life saving information. If the feedback from the system is easily ignorable, it will have little impact on driver safety.

We must also be aware that there is a possibility of providing the user with too much information thereby distracting the user and actually decreasing the driver's safety. While similar systems have in use in military aircraft for years, the user population is carefully screened for only those with a high level of mental processing. Since the user population of this product would potentially contain every automobile owner, our system must take into account a wide range of visual, auditory, and mental processing abilities.

Important design dependent questions are:

  1. Do the audio and visual cues distract the driver?

  2. Will users find the signals (audio and visual) annoying?

  3. Driver Response. Does the system provide feedback quickly enough to allow the user to process the information and act within a given time interval. (How long does it take for users to process the information provided?)

Design Prototype top

The Sonopticon(tm) prototype was implemented on a system consisting of two IBM Thinkpads and one pair of Virtual I/O I-glasses.

An evaluatior is taken on a car ride with a simulation Sonopticon(tm) running.  For safety reasons, the evaluator does not drive. The evaluator sits in the  passenger seat donning I-glasses and earbud headphones.  Three operators sit in the back seat.  One individual operates a Thinkpad to send Heads Up Display (HUD) images to the I-glasses.  The I-glasses have a translucent LCD display which approximates an augmented reality automobile HUD.  A second Thinkpad sends audio to the evaluator.  The evaluator's ears are completely isolated from the real world hearing only the audio coming from the Thinkpad.  The Thinkpad sends ambient audio, car noises, and it provides the Sonopticon(tm) auditory display.

The evaluator is seated in a parked car.  The driver and Thinkpad operators follow the script below.  The script dictates the driver's actions.  It also describes when specific HUD icons and auditory signals are triggered on the Thinkpads.  A third individual sitting between the Thinkpad operators videotapes the evaluator and records reaction times.

Sonopticon Evaluation Script:

Task 1

-Car is parked
-Car is turned on, radio comes on (triggered audio)
-Car starts to back up over an obstacle
-Sonopticon collision alert sounds

Task 2

-Driver goes onto I-85
-Traffic noise cancellation system is demonstrated (triggered audio)
-Car drives for a while
-Siren comes from behind (triggered audio icon and HUD)
-Radio is attenuated or even cut off
-Dopplerized siren sounds with visual representation of where it is coming
(triggered audio and HUD)

Task 3

-Car enters high traffic (triggered audio)
-HUD displays a simple iconic  map showing traffic bottlenecks
-Driver tries to change lanes
-However, an 18 wheeler is in the blindspot
-Collision warning system alerts the driver and prevents a catastrophe (triggered audio)
-Car arrives at destination
-Sonopticon(tm) shuts down

This script will be executed for the heuritic evaluation, think aloud, and questionnaire exercises.



Evaluation Plan top

  1. Heuristic Evaluation

    The first evaluation technique we chose is to perform a heuristic evaluation. During a heuristic evaluation evaluators work independently while critiquing the system based to some general usability principles or guidelines. While evaluating the system, these guidelines will be used to identify possible usability problems. Once the evaluators have completed their individual evaluation, they will then discuss their findings and rank the problems they found in order of severity.

    For this portion of the evaluation we use storyboard scenarios to as our system artifact.

    Listed below are the principles or guidelines we will ask the evaluators to follow while evaluating our system:

    Simple and natural dialogue
    The signals provided to the user should be easy to understand and distinguish from one another. User's should not be confused whether they are about to collide with a unseen object or if they are out of gas.

    Recognition rather than recall
    When signals are produced by the system they should have attached to them meaningful information to aid the user in knowing what action to choose from. For example the signal that there is a car in a blind spot should also let the user know which blind spot so the car can be avoided.

    Robustness
    Since this product is designed for the general population, we must take into account varying degrees of sensitivity in the user's sight and auditory capabilities. Therefore, it is important that information be provided in more than one fashion to ensure it is detected.

  2. Think Aloud

    During our second phase of evaluation we have chosen a think aloud session to analyze of how well users will respond to the system while driving. Using this procedure we can provide the design team with some quantitative data about users' reaction times to the system's cues.

    To simulate the functionality of our system each evaluator will be placed in the passenger seat of an automobile and asked to wear virtual I/O glasses. The evaluator must then give the driver all instructions on what to do. The evaluators 'thinking aloud' will provide the driver will the individual actions required to drive a car. For example an evaluator's dialog would be similar to the following:

    Start the car.
    Put car in gear (fwd).
    Go forward.
    Stop. Sonopticon detected squirrel running towards us. (Not an actual feature of SonopticonTM)
    We believe that this should provide the evaluator with as close a simulation as possible of driving a car with a full windshield HUD unit.

    Our simulation will require three members of the design team to be in the car. Two team members will be in the back seat 'Wizard of Ozing' the systems functions while the third team member drives the car through the simulation scenarios.

    We will record the user during the following scenarios:

    1. Car parked in driveway. Car is turned on, radio is on. Car starts to back out of driveway, but there is an obstacle in the way
    2. Driving down highway with the radio on. An emergency vehicle approaches from behind.
    3. Driving in high traffic and driver decides to change lanes, but there is a car in the blind spot.

    We will use a video camera during the evaluation to record each user's session. One of the design team members will use a stop watch to record the time delay from when the system's cues are 'displayed' and when the evaluator responds to them.

  3. Questionnaire

    The final method of evaluation for our system will be the use of a post trial questionnaire. The questionnaires will give the designer team a more quantitative measure of how well the system has been designed.

    Level of Education: _____________________________.

    Occupation: _____________________________.

    Model of car currently driving: _____________________________ .

    Scale:
    1 "Strongly Agree"
    2 "Agree"
    3 "Partially Agree"
    4 "Disagree"
    5 "Strongly Disagree"

    The system was helpful in aiding to your awareness of your driving environment. 

    1	2	3	4	5
    The level of the auditory signals adequate. (Could you here the signals clearly?) 

    1	2	3	4	5
    The tone of the auditory signals was adequate. (Was the tone of the signal easy for you to detect?) 

    1	2	3	4	5
    The auditory signals announcing that an object in my blind spot was distracting. 

    1	2	3	/PREhe location of t0C0C
H	H`80Cl,`4	H	`0C00Cisplu was easily legible.


    

    1	2	3	4	5
    

The visually displayed information was annoying.


    

    1	2	3	4	5
    

The auditory displayed information was annoying.


    

    1	2	3	4	4
    

If reasonably affordable, I would purchase this system for my car.


    

    1	2	3	4	5

Appendix top

A key design criteria of this project involved creating an effective, non-annoying auditory display. We aimed to avoid repeating the mistakes exhibited by the "talking" cars of the mid 1980's.  Engineering psychology and auditory display texts were reviewed during development of the sonopticon prototype. The criteria listed below were considered in evaluating the suitability of the SonopticonTM auditory components.

According to Sanders and McCormick in Human Factors in Engineering and Design, auditory displays should be used instead of visual displays:

  • When the message calls for immediate action (Example: collision, blind-spot warning)

  • When the visual display is overburdened (Example: Driving )

  • When the message is simple and short (Example: collision, blind-spot warning)

Deatherage and Mudd state:

Warning signals should utilize frequencies different from background noises (example: interior, traffic ambience) to minimize masking.

If different warning signals are used to represent different conditions requiring different responses, each should be discriminable from the others, and moderate intensity signals should be used. Other References to Automobile Interfaces:

Bibliography

Deatherage, B.H. (1972). Auditory and other sensory forms of information presentation. In H.P. Van Cott and R.G. Kincade (eds.), Human engineering guide to equipment design.  Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Kramer, G. (ed.) (1994.)  Auditory Display: Sonification, Audification, and Auditory Interfaces. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.

Mudd, S.A. (1961). The scaling and experimental investigation of four dimensions of pure tone and their use in an audio-visual monitoring problem.  Unpublished Ph.D. thesis.  Lafayette, IN: Purdue University.

Sanders, M.S. and McCormick E.J. (1993).  Human Factors in Engineering and Design.  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.


Last Modified: 11.19.97
John Tolva