LED Visualizations for Drivers' Attention: An Exploratory Study on Experience and Associated Information Contents

When it comes to highly automated driving, several studies indicate that drivers should be "kept in the loop" when driving in automated mode in order to be better prepared when they need to take over. The challenge lies in finding a way that raises the drivers' situation awareness without annoying the driver, who may be occupied with another task. Ambient light systems using LED visualizations provide a feasible way to draw attention, however, the kind of information that can be communicated is limited. In this paper, we present an exploratory study, where we investigated the semantic quality of different LED patterns (shown on an LED-strip) by capturing experience and associated information contents. Our initial findings show that LED visualizations, which are experienced quite similar at first, can nonetheless be distinctive with regard to the associated information contents.