A Gender Study of Communication Interfaces between an Autonomous Car and a Pedestrian
Author: Chia-Ming Chang
Category: Interaction Design / 2020
Organisation: Dept. of Creative Informatics / The University of Tokyo; Dept. of Communication and Technology / National Chiao Tung University
● The 12th ACM International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
(AutomotiveUI 2020), Washington, DC, USA, Virtual Conference, 21-22 September 2020
Communication between an autonomous car and a pedestrian is an important issue that has been widely discussed in the recent years. Many studies and car companies proposed concepts of communication interface on an autonomous car to communicate with a pedestrian. However, there is no detailed study in exploring communication interfaces from a gender perspective. In this study, we explored vehicle-to-pedestrian communication from a gender perspective. We firstly designed three types of communication interface on an autonomous car: verbal, non-verbal and expressive interfaces. And then we compared these three types of communication interface in a pedestrian street-crossing situation via a video experiment. The results show that there are significant differences between male and female pedestrians in the expressive interface (smile and non-smile). More female pedestrians can understand car’s intention via the expressive interfaces than male pedestrians. Additionally, more female pedestrians feel the expressive interface is reliable and comfortable about than male pedestrians.