Designing and Evaluating Ubicomp Characteristics of Intelligent In-Car Systems

In this paper, we present a preliminary taxonomy for designing and evaluating intelligent systems from the viewpoint of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). As an example of intelligent systems, we examine a few novel in-car systems, which are already commercially available. We also discuss some ergonomics issues related to the design of in-car systems and argue that rationale for solving these issues can be found from the ideal qualities of ubicomp systems. The five characteristics we define to be ideal for genuine ubicomp systems are context-awareness, natural interaction methods, invisibility, support for everyday tasks, and interconnectivity. Based on these characteristics, we create a framework to analyse the differences between the ubicomp characteristics of the examined novel in-car systems. To assess the utility of the framework in the development of entirely new systems, we use it to evaluate two intelligent prototype in-car systems. The results suggest that the framework suits well for guiding the design and evaluation of in-car computing systems from the ubicomp point of view. Future work needs to be conducted to improve the applicability of the framework in evaluating also other intelligent systems than only in-car systems.