Vehicle area network (VAN) communications and related services are getting more pervasive [1]. However, even though user-centered design has been emphasized, VAN services have often been developed through a technology-driven approach. This paper presents cross-cultural survey results on VAN services in three different countries: Austria, USA, and South Korea. The current research compared the state-of-the-art of drivers' current in-vehicle technology use and investigated their needs and wants for plausible new services in the near future. Further, we validated our next generation in-vehicle interface concepts stemming from our previous participatory design process [2]. Results showed clear differences between Austrians vs. Americans and Koreans. Even though Koreans and Americans in our survey were older than Austrians, they seemed more open-minded to VAN services (e.g., social networks in car, V2V services, in-vehicle agent, etc) in general and rated them more positively. Through these cross-cultural needs analyses of end users, designers and practitioners are expected to gain insights into developing a standardized service across cultures as well as culturally tuned in-vehicle interfaces. Moreover, we hope that this initial international collaboration can serve as a good test bed for future research and hope to expand our consortium with more colleagues in the AutomotiveUI community for further cross-cultural studies.
['Myounghoon Jeon', 'Andreas Riener', 'Ju-Hwan Lee', 'Jonathan H. Schuett', 'Bruce N. Walker']
Cross-cultural differences in the use of in-vehicle technologies and vehicle area network services: Austria, USA, and South Korea