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Alpine and CGI worked together to get the myQ app into the car’s aftermarket infotainment stack. The software was designed to allow users to control a variety of devices including, lights, thermostats, gates, and of course, the garage door. Alpine had strict UI guidelines and a templated layout, but the head developers and I worked together and implemented a fully functioning interface. Laying out interactions and error cases, all while keeping automotive standards in mind, we framed the UI to fit the system while giving the driver control over their connected devices. However, figuring out an entirely new interface required some research.

Enter the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) and Group Head, Research Professor, Human Factors, Paul Green. Professor Green walked me through his processes in UMTRI which included how driver distraction affected all aspects of any interface in the vehicle.

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One of the highest priorities in building out an interface for the vehicle was “driver distraction”. Drivers have a lot on their minds, including items like conditions of the road, how many passengers, working all the controls, the state of the vehicle, and even the state of the driver (were they running late, tired, etc.). In the end, Alpine’s infotainment stack had a template we had to accommodate for, which did not follow our research findings for the UI.

Following the state of the vehicle, the driver, and all of the many drains on their cognitive workload, was the interface. After lots of testing how driver’s would interact with a display in the car, we carefully, modified the typical layout to accommodate the physical effort to control a user interface while driving. The idea was that the further a driver had to reach, the more that act took away from the focus of driving. Therefore, the UI was modified in a way that put major calls-to-actions as close to the driver as possible. Is your in-car display arranged like this? Should it be?