Understanding / Ease of Use of the System

In Autonomous Driving

• Represents the passengers' understanding and perceived ease of use of the autonomous vehicle's system.
• Transparency and communication in autonomous driving are important. Studies have shown that the user's understanding of the system decreases with higher autonomy [1].
• Different feedback modalities can be used to increase the system's understanding/ease of use - see Feedback Modality Cards.

Understanding / Ease of Use Definition

• Ease of use is a fundamental concept of good usability, which includes all UX components that have to do with how simple it is for consumers to learn and find content, and accomplish more with a design or product [2].
• Making a design easy to understand and use directly benefits the usability and UX.
• The Interaction Design Foundation has a set of questions that can help you to design for understanding and ease of use [2]:
  • Where would they use this product? – e.g., at home
  • How would they use it? – e.g., on a smartphone
  • What would prompt them to use it? – e.g., needing to book travel tickets
  • What would they expect to find as they move through a process? – e.g., a shopping cart
  • What’s going on around them while they use it?– e.g., are they moving around, possibly stressed?
  • What obstacles might keep them from using it? – e.g., signal strength issues, other parties must act first.
  • What could motivate them to pick your product over a competitor’s? – E.g., they can wear your fitness app and scan food product barcodes with a smartphone.

Evaluating the Understanding / Ease of Use

Sources

[1] - Hewitt, Charlie, et al. "Assessing public perception of self-driving cars: The autonomous vehicle acceptance model." Proceedings of the 24th international conference on intelligent user interfaces. 2019.

[2] - Interaction Design Foundation. "What is Ease of Use?" URL: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ease-of-use [Accessed October 2022].