Cognitive States Matter: Design Guidelines for Driving Situation Awareness in Smart Vehicles

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Psychology
• Automotive Safety

Background:

• Situation awareness (SA) is vital for safe driving, involving perception, comprehension, and projection of future states.
• Current SA design principles offer general guidance but lack detail for limited human cognitive capabilities.
• Future vehicles with advanced sensors will present complex information, challenging driver SA.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate key cognitive attributes influencing SA in driving: attention focus, mental model, workload, and memory.
• To identify eight critical cognitive states affecting driver SA.
• To propose cognitive state-aware SA design guidelines for effective information conveyance.

Main Methods:

• Investigated cognitive attributes and identified eight influential cognitive states.
• Developed cognitive state-aware SA design guidelines.
• Conducted controlled experiments comparing existing and new SA interfaces using SAGAT and DMQ.

Main Results:

• The new SA interface, designed with cognitive state-aware guidelines, led to significantly higher SA scores.
• Participants using the new interface exhibited improved decision-making performance.
• The study validates the effectiveness of considering cognitive states in SA system design.

Conclusions:

• Cognitive state-aware design guidelines enhance driver situation awareness and decision-making.
• These guidelines address limitations in current SA design principles for complex driving environments.
• Future research should explore further integration of cognitive states into automotive HMI design.