Driver eye movement during a route navigation information search

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Driver eye movement during a route navigation information search

Li, G. / Middleton, H.

In-vehicle route navigation systems are used by an increasing number of drivers throughout the world. These systems are intended to assist the driver in the driving task by providing real-time navigational instructions. However most route navigation systems appear to have been developed on the basis of technical features, rather than from a usability/human factors viewpoint, causing concerns over their safety implications, especially for older drivers. An experimental study was carried out to test drivers' preference of markers in an electronic map display. This was done by analysing drivers eye fixation and movement during information searching in a number of route navigation tasks. The study indicates that, in order to find the 'correct' road during a navigational search, participants adopt visual search strategies in which they tend to fixate, initially on text road identification markers, followed by glances to numeric and symbolic road markers. There was also significant interaction between marker type and map orientation for their influences on eye fixation. The variation of eye fixation time depends on both the type of markers/references and their orientation. When the markers were presented either upright or upside down, the subjects looked at the text marker longer than any other marker types, when the markers were half-rotated however, the subjects tended to use numeric reference more often. It is anticipated that by taking the driver preference for road marker type into consideration in the design of in-vehicle route displays, the system will be used more efficiently.