Safe and Sound Drive: Design of Interactive Sounds Supporting Energy Efficient Behaviour

The Safe and Sound Drive project concerns the design of an audio-only serious game for cars that will help drivers to increase eco-driving skills and encourage safe and environmentally friendly approaches to driving. The design process has been influenced by industrial design methodology and user-centred agile methods. Game engine technology and audio middleware were used for rapid prototyping. Sounds were made interactive by actively controlling them based on driving behaviour, and were designed to help and encourage a stable and suitable speed. User feedback was collected at an early stage through contextual enquiry sessions during real driving. Later, the system was showcased at two science festivals, where over 400 attendees test drove a game simulator. The agile design process provided continuous feedback to the project team, and guided the design of a version of the game that was evaluated in a simulator experiment. The results from the user studies suggest that opinions about beeps and audio signals vary among subjects whereas music and podcast based contents were generally better received. Alteration of media content by actively adjusting spectral balance or music mix formed working mechanisms for providing cues easily understood by participants. However, only minor effects on energy efficient behaviour were seen, suggesting that visual information dominated the determination of the participants’ behaviour in the experiment