Towards personalisation of the driver environment: investigating responses to instrument cluster design

Recent trends in the automotive and the Information Technology (IT) industries lead to growing consumer expectations for aesthetic and personalised design of products. The merging of these trends is more likely to lead to considerable changes in the driver environment. Two experiments were conducted in which we examined people's aesthetic response to the design of Instrument Clusters (ICs): the first used images of existing clusters, and the second used a set of conceptual ICs that were designed to enable the experimental control of the ICs' form and colour. The results indicate strong correlations between preferences, symbolism and attractiveness. There was noapparent trade-off between attractiveness and readability, although attractiveness was given more weight than readability in determining people's preferences. Typicality and novelty of the design were negatively correlated, and both contributed to explaining variance in aesthetic evaluations. Finally, diversity in design preferences suggests the benefits of personalised driving environment.