Identifying Control Groupings and Menu Structures for Advanced Automotive Systems Using Psychological Clustering and Scaling Techniques

As automobile manufacturers seek to provide customers with a growing array of in-vehicle information and functionality, information management becomes an important task for the driver. The organization of controls and information in the human/machine interface (HMI) is a major factor determining the efficiency with which users access and process information. This paper describes two studies in which empirical psychological methods are used to identify users’ conceptual organization of automotive system functions. Results provide guidance for laying out controls and structuring hierarchical menus in HMIs for two products.