A Integrated Design Study Of Automotive Soft And Hard Human-Machine Interface

This research is granted by National Program on Key Basic Research Project (973 Program) and commercial car styling design projects. Two basic theoretical questions are involved in the systematical research on the design and assessment of the software and hardware of automotive human-machine interface design. Firstly, as an organic whole, the automotive human-machine interface should be concordant on design theme, visual style, interactive experience and service function. However, the design processes of the software and hardware interface are usually separated in current situation, resulting the difficulty of general control on the final quality of interactive product. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to construct an automotive human-machine interface developing process and a standard-unified practical design activity system at a macro level. Secondly, the designers’knowledge, experience and their analysis, integration and judgment on the problems are important factors, which could influent the design quality. Therefore, to integrate the studies on design tools and methods could provide an important theoretical and practical meaning to the improvements on the efficiency, expression, communication and final result of design.This dissertation uses multi research methods including "case analysis", "user survey", "user test", "designer interview", "workshop". Based on the design projects and research activities of "Electric Vehicle Interior and Human-Machine Interface Design", "Advanced Interaction Technology & Automobile Human-Machine Interface Trend Design Research" ,"Driving Interaction Behavior and Lifestyle Database of Chinese Drivers "the theoretical framework and model are raised combining a large amount of literature study.The main content of this research is as follow.Chapter I summarizes the domain background of the research including the processes of automotive styling, interaction design and HMI design, and gives the definitions of research notions, terms and key problems based on the academic background of prescriptiveness, descriptiveness, rational problem solving, reflective practices and the connotation of integration in design.Chapter II identifies the integration problems in design process and tools by means of phenomenon analysis, designer interview, workshop and analyzing the evolution of ergonomic, needs of user experience and character of designer.Chapter Ⅲ sets up the skeleton of integrated design by analyzing the processes and logical structure of typical software and hardware products development; and proposes the frame of Integrated design by analyzing the processes and sequential structure of automotive interior design and interaction design; and finally establishes the integration process of automotive soft and hard human-machine interface design by analyzing the tasks and objects in physical styling and interaction design and extracting which to integrate.Chapter Ⅳ focuses on analyzing the methods and objects of soft and hard interface evaluation, and proposes the levels, tools, methods and carriers in the evaluation.Chapter Ⅴ emphasizes the analysis of the way to conceptually innovate in car styling and interaction design and their characteristics in applications; and presents the mood board and story board tools to drive the integration of conceptual innovation in automotive soft and hard human-machine interface against the two key problems in interface styles and interaction process.Chapter Ⅵ constructs a V Model for integrated design based on stage regulatory and task dynamicity by analyzing the logical and sequential property; and proposes a two-way design strategy, which contains top-down design and bottom-up assessment method, to drive the "creativity leap"; and finally presents a methodology model of integrated design based on the "core and surface" thinking.The main contributions of the research are in four aspects.First, according to the evaluation, test and analysis on the design stages, design tasks, design objects, evaluation objects, evaluation tools and methods in car styling and interaction design processes, the research builds an automotive soft and hard human-machine interface integrated design process, and proposes a theoretical system of integrated evaluation and test. From the point of automotive, a kind of typical complex product, the research establishes an automotive soft and hard human-machine interface integrated development mode, which has prospective meaning to the automotive and intelligent devices development, and has creative meaning to exploring a new development system.Second, based on the study on conceptual innovation method in car styling and interaction design, the research presents the conceptual integrated tool, the mood board and the story board, which can drive the integration of styling and interaction design, in order to solve the two important problems of visual style and interaction process in the stage of integrating the concepts and system construction. This achievement has great meaning in assistant design creativity.Third, by analyzing the "assemblage" relationship of the integration and differentiation nodes in design process, the research considers the nodes to be the control points in the integration-differentiation management, whose organization form reflects target, structure, range of the design task. The research proposes two basic thinking, to research following the sequential relationship and logical relationship. The research holds a view that the skeleton of integrated design is the internal cause of integration and differentiation, which makes a firm inner prescriptiveness for the integration nods including those of conception, deduction, details and refinements, and reflects the logical property in the resolving process. Another opinion presented in the research is that the integration of design process, as the context of the generation of design, is the external cause of integration and differentiation, which reveals the temporal property and ordinal relationship of the subtasks including the nods of task analysis, concept search, proposal development, implementation and verification, and reflects the sequential property of design process.Fourth, a phenomenon discovered in the research on the processes, assessment levels and nods properties of integration design is that the staged prescriptiveness and task dynamicity exist side by side. It is argued that the staged integration and assessment decide the intervening time of control points, and they reflect the prescriptive characters in the processes. The research presents another point of view that the dynamic integration and assessment are unpredictable in the development plan, and they appear to be partial integration in a small range, reflecting the design thinking is jumping and the design tasks are dynamic. Based on the staged prescriptiveness and task dynamicity phenomenon, a design integrating V Model and "creativity leap" tow-way strategy, the top-down design and bottom-up assessment method, are proposed. The top-down design method is input with integrated design target and output integrated design objects. It drives the definitions, concepts and detailed proposal design by integrating design targets, and drives a top to down creativity jumping and the creativity variation in a same level by the alternating process of integration and differentiation. The bottom-up assessment method takes prescriptive evaluation levels and tasks as frame and guide, and explores the verification space, leads design with tests, pushes innovation with outputs, in order to drive "creativity leap" from bottom to top. The achievements have creative meaning in design process research level.At last, the research proposes a methodological integrated design model, "core and surface", which relates to the integrations of design space and information level, design knowledge and tools level, design specification and decision level. The integration of design space affects the design target, direction and range; the information level is the derivative from the core of design space, which indicates the fusion of input and output information through the nods. The integration of design knowledge means constructing a shared, conceptual, apparent and descriptive frame through the reorganization of the separated soft and hard interface domain knowledge to provide design assistance and efficiency; the tools level is the derivative from the core of design knowledge, reflecting the properties of method, approach and means. The integration of design specification focuses on the evaluation and decision on the soft and hard interface, and rebuilds the standard and method of integrated design assessment; the decision level is the derivative from the core of design specification, which could be the reference of the technology and standard. The achievements have creative meaning in design methodological level.