Interactive Car Owner's Manual User Study

We present results of a user study with a prototype of an interactive speech-enabled car owner's user manual assistant. Its purpose is to help the driver learn about various car features and related procedures. The study focused on two scenarios -- when parked and while driving. We also used the Leap Motion gesture recognizer as an alternative to buttons. During the experiment we collected both objective driving data and subjective feedback. Results indicate that the users preferred the electronic user manual to the paper form, although they proposed numerous improvements. One particular concern was discoverability of content. The acceptance of Leap Motion gestures was low when driving, possibly impacted by short time allowed for practicing. Driver's distraction caused by interacting with the multimodal user manual was similar to that of receiving and reading text messages.