Personas as drivers

Research and development on vehicle safety has lately started to direct its focus towards how to actively support the driver and make it easier for her to drive safely through letting Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have effect on how the driver interacts with the vehicle and the surrounding traffic. This requires research on both how the driver and vehicle perform in different situations, in terms of psychology, cognition and individual differences. In addition, physical limitations and requirements of the driver and the vehicle must be taken into account. Therefore scenarios for evaluation of these systems are required. In the area of user-centered design a rather new method, Personas, is being adopted. This thesis tries to explore if the Persona method is a viable tool for creating scenarios for such evaluations. Experiences after completing this work imply that personas indeed is a viable way to include aspects and raise issues concerning individual variability and situational context in ADAS scenarios.