Designing and Evaluating In-Vehicle Temporal Decoupling Pointing System for Selecting External Object

TL;DR

This paper introduces Point and Select, a novel in-vehicle interaction system that temporally decouples pointing and selection to reduce driver cognitive load and improve safety.

Contribution

It presents a new interaction paradigm with temporal decoupling for in-vehicle POI selection, validated through simulator experiments showing reduced cognitive workload.

Findings

Reduces perceived cognitive workload during POI selection.

Maintains primary driving performance with the new system.

Mitigates cognitive friction in in-vehicle interactions.

Abstract

As In-Vehicle Infotainment Systems (IVIS) grow in complexity, selecting external points of interest (POIs) using traditional touchscreens significantly increases driver cognitive load. Recent evidence indicates that this visual-motor overload induces dangerous "hand-before-eye" behaviors, degrading primary driving tasks. To address this, we propose Point and Select, a novel in-vehicle interaction paradigm that introduces temporal decoupling to spatial gestures. By dividing the interaction into a rapid, ballistic spatial anchoring phase ("Rough Pointing") and a deferred, tactile confirmation phase ("Fine Selection"), our design aligns with the driver's cognitive-motor sequence. We evaluated this temporally decoupled approach in a high-fidelity driving simulator under urban speed conditions. Results indicate that Point and Select effectively minimizes perceived cognitive workload while seamlessly maintaining primary driving performance. This study demonstrates that decoupling spatial identification from confirmation successfully mitigates cognitive friction, offering a safer behavioral design strategy for non-autonomous driving environments.