HCI CORE QUESTIONS

Q1.Cars are becoming increasingly autonomous, in that more and more of the basic driving
functions can be handled by the vehicle itself, without human intervention. Indeed, some cars
are already capable of fully autonomous driving, under certain conditions. However, if the
sensors and/or automation fail, the car will return control back to the human, thus thrusting the
person out of the role of ‘passenger” and back into the role of “driver”.

A. Pick either Situated Action or Use Distributed Cognition to analyze the problem of transferring the
human’s role from ‘passenger’ to ‘driver.’ to discuss how it could be used as part of the process for
designing the car-driver interface in future vehicles that include partial or complete automation
of the driving task.

B. Can you imagine potential solutions to this problem? Identify the process by which you might
develop solutions to this problem.

C. How would you know if you got there? Describe a study to evaluate whether you have
successfully fixed the problem of transferring control back to the user. Be sure to identify the
metrics and methods, with citations