Let’s Drive! helps new drivers practice driving and gain better driving skills through their car’s infotainment system.

Let’s Drive! Overview

Let’s Drive! is an app that allows a new driver to practice their driving skills in through their vehicle’s Infotainment system. It utilizes the sensors in the vehicle to detect the position a vehicle is in the lane, how fast they are going, as well as various other features designed to keep the driver and their occupants safe. The app is geared for use by newer drivers, and as a supplemental teaching tool to be used by parents and driving instructors.

Most instructions and feedback from the app happens through audio, with minimal screen changes as to not distract the driver, allowing them to keep their eyes on the road. Words of encouragement and sound effects that signify task completion. It also adds some gamified elements to further help build the confidence of new drivers, as well as give them tips for more improvement.

The Task

Let’s Drive! was proven to be useful in helping student drivers practice safe driving skills in a simulator, but was untested on a live road in a real driving situation. Our UX Research team was given the task of testing the app in a real life driving situation with Student Drivers. Since this study required participants under the age of 18, we needed to get parental consent. Originally the development team in Japan wanted to just test these new student drivers, but our team brought up that parents have the final say in what driver aids their child is allowed to use, thus we needed to run the test with both student drivers and their parents separately. They gave us a 6 week deadline to write the test, recruit participants, run the test, and report back.

My Role

I was on the Human Factors/UX Research team, and was co-lead to the project. Since this was my first time doing an on-road driving study, my partner and co-lead took charge of creating the driving routes and procedures to complete the various driving courses for the task, and creating the set questions we would ask participants during the drive. It then fell to me to write the Introduction/ Priming questions, post task questions, and the overall interview questions. I was the primary note taker when the new drivers were participating in the study, and my partner was the primary moderator. We switched roles when the parents were participating. I was the primary recruiter for the study, and we collaborated in the analysis and reporting duty.

Participant Requirements

Because we had two sets of participants, we needed to recruit participants that fell under two criteria, new drivers and parents of new drivers. Where we could, we recruited one parent and one new driver from the same family. Each family member would participate in the study separately.

New Drivers:

• Had to be between the ages of 16-19 years old

• Needed to have a Learner’s Permit and not a driver’s license

• Had less than 3 months total of driving experience

Parents of New Drivers:

• Had to have a child who was learning to drive between the ages of 16-19

• Their child must have been driving for less than 3 months

• Must have been teaching their child to drive at least 25% of the time outside of driving school

Materials

To conduct this study, we needed specialized materials, namely:

• An unbadged street legal vehicle with the Let’s Drive! app installed in the infotainment system

• One dash camera to record driving and safety information

• Two mini cameras (GoPro Hero 5) to record app screen activity and participants’ reactions

Methodology

Our study flow consisted of an introductory interview, three driving tasks, and a post interview. The study ran typically for 45-60 minutes. All driving tasks were the three tasks available in the app (safe braking, maintaining a safe following distance, and staying in between the lane lines), and the order they were taken by each participant was randomly selected. All drive tasks were done within a 3 square mile radius in Torrance, California during daylight hours outside of rush hour traffic.

1. Introduction - Introduce the study and what is expected of the participant, understand the participant’s background, experience, and feelings about driving and learning how to drive. Gather initial impressions of the app. Allow for clarifying questions from the participant. (5-10 Minutes)

2. Drive Task 1 and Post Task Interview (10-15 minutes)

3. Drive Task 2 and Post Task Interview (10-15 minutes)

4. Drive Task 3 and Post Task Interview (10-15 minutes)

5. Final interview and debrief (5-10 minutes)

“Wow, this would make my teaching my kid to drive a lot easier.”
-Parent

”This is a lot less stressful than driving with my mom. I’d rather use the app than get yelled at.”
-New Driver

• Both parents and new drivers felt the app did a good job making the drive feel less stressful.

• New Drivers in particular felt the encouragement made them drive better and feel more confident while they were driving.

“I like that you don’t need to look at the screen to know you’re doing well. It makes me feel better about using this thing.”
-Parent


”Just hearing the coin sound from Super Mario when I get a star just feels so good. I know I did it and I don’t feel like I need to look down.”
-New Driver

• Both parents and new drivers liked the fact that looking at the screen was unnecessary to know they were making progress

• Gamified elements like the coin sounds, earning stars , and getting awards felt gratifying for new drivers, making them want to use the app more.

“It’s cool that you can see your results when you finish. I thought I was terrible, but seeing this makes me fell less afraid of driving.”
-New Driver

• New drivers felt a confidence boost after seeing how well they drove after they completed a task, but they would have liked a much more detailed report of how they did, as well as advice on how to improve
  

• Parents liked the fact that there were measures of progress, which gave them a jumping off point to discuss improvements their new driver could make

“How am I supposed to know what level I’m at when I choose the course?”
-New Driver

• Both Parents and New Drivers did not like the difficulty settings because they felt it would always be inaccurate

• Most participants suggested that the first time the app was used, an assessment drive would set the difficulty of the tasks you do.

• New Drivers felt the three initial exercises were helpful, but were not the things they wanted the most help with. They felt they needed more help with things like making safe lane switches, improving their turns, and parking.

“Sometimes when the instructor would speak, she would give me advice that I didn’t know what to do with, like ‘Watch out!’ I didn’t know what to look for so I got really nervous. I also hated when she said some random facts. I thought she was pointing out a mistake, but when I realized she was saying something not about driving, it just made me angry.”
-New Driver

”She (the instructor) needs to be more specific when giving feedback. If my kid heard this, it would make them more nervous, and I think more likely for them to make a mistake.”
-Parent

• Although the ambiguous lines were fine in the simulator studies, in real life situations, it was distracting and only served to make participants feel more nervous and unsure of themselves.
  

• Parents stated that if the directions were this ambiguous, they would not feel safe letting their new driver use the app.
  

• While parents thought the non-sequitur comments could be annoying, new drivers disliked it more because they felt only comments related to their performance were appropriate.
  

“Wow, that dinging noise is annoying. What is that?”
-New Driver

”I feel like that bar and spinning circle thing is not necessary, and I’m afraid it could be distracting. I can see it from the corner of my eye and I want to look at it.”
-Parent

• The extra feedback sound the app made to signify the progress bar being filled annoyed all participants

• Most participants felt the progress bar and the spinning icon were unnecessary. Nearly half of all participants did not notice the bar or the spinning icon. The other half thought it was annoying.

Overall the response to the app was positive and that both parents and new drivers would use the app if it was installed in the Infotainment system provided that the major issues were addressed. There are some things to keep in mind:

• The app needed to implement more courses that new drivers felt they needed more practice with in order for them to feel like the app was worth using.

• The users of the app want more concrete and specific information given to make improvements related to their driving.

• The amount of gamified elements in the app had struck a good balance between being encouraging versus distracting, and future updates to the app need to maintain this balance.

• New Drivers and Parents liked the app enough to want to use it and would recommend it to other parents and student drivers only as a teaching tool with supervision, or as a supplementary practice tool post gaining their license.

Change 1:

All drive exercise screens removed the analysis bar and spinning circle icon. The associated analysis sounds were also removed. Only the Super Mario Coin sound played when an objective was completed.

Change 2:

All non-sequitur lines were removed from the app entirely. All the ambiguous feedback lines were also removed and replaced with context appropriate feedback.

Change 4:

Added a detailed results screen where you could choose different results and get feedback on how to improve. It also will break down as to what contributes to the score.

Change Results

Post implementation of these changes found significant results:

• Overall improved confidence and trust that the app is helpful in teaching driving skills among both parents and new drivers

• New drivers overall felt more comfortable using the app and held more positive feelings towards that app over the previous version

• Both parents and new drivers liked having the detailed results, with parents feeling like it gave them an objective starting point for their feedback, and new drivers understanding where they could make concrete improvements on their own

• Increased the likelihood overall of participants recommending the app to their friends and the participants desire to use the app

Conclusion

Overall the premise of the app was validated by users as something that is both useful and appealing to them. The major changes helped the project move forward into the final stages of development and meet the deadline for submission to the safety commission’s approval. After various internal reviews, the project was approved to move forward to deployment.