Visual Display for Telematics, the Cognitive Factor

Abstract

This presentation is a summary of a paper submitted to IIEEJ journal. It will focus on in-vehicle display use and its related cognitive overload. Since visual interfaces are needed for in-vehicle information and tasks, their design must provide the driver a low cognitive demand. The display is not only a visual issue but rather a cognitive issue, which should be tackled by image engineering teams working on improving visual telematics interfaces. Concerns are often raised about the potential of displays technologies to distract drivers from their driving task, highlighting the importance of a well-designed visual human machine interface (VHMI), the telematics display. Visual Displays have the potential to be a double-edged sword for users. While the new information opportunities that telematics creates are clearly valuable, visual systems that are designed to assist in safe driving also add cognitive workload to the driving task, thus creating an unsafe driving environment.