How important is total task time when measuring system performance and driver distraction? Can we rely on task time and number of steps?
For example, when I had to dial a contact from my address book it took me 14 seconds with the touchscreen, 21s with the idrive and 26s when I used the idrive + touchpad. So touchscreen must be the best right? Of course, touchscreen is the best, it's a no brainer.
Will it be such an easy choice if I tell you that for the same use case touchscreen had 9s total eyes-off-road time (TEORT), idrive had 8s and idrive + touchpad had 6s TEORT?
That is the reason why I love using eye tracking, because it helps me understand the data at a deeper level.
Of course, there are questions about mental workload while still on the task and despite eyes-on-road. In addition, mind wandering while driving needs to be taken into account. However, I believe that eye tracking can provide high quality evidence that increases the strength of our recommendations.
Data collection and analysis as part of a personal study conducted in the summer of 2018. Many thanks to Scott Hodgins and Jon Ward at Tobii Pro
P.S. idrive is an extremely powerful system. I still love touchscreens and the Audi A8