Exploring Usability Evaluation Method of Interconnection Task Between Extended Equipment and Intelligent Cockpit

Extended equipment refers to devices based on user needs that are not constrained by the space, software, or hardware of the automotive intelligent cockpit. It possesses independent capabilities outside the cabin and, when interconnected with the automotive intelligent cockpit, enhance cockpit functionalities and enrich the user experience. Due to their strong independent out-of-cockpit functions, users frequently connect the cockpit with mainstream extended equipment (smartphones, tablets, etc.) Improving the user experience of the interconnection process requires targeted evaluation methods first. To investigate the evaluation methods for the usability of interconnections between Automotive Intelligent cockpit and extended equipment, 35 participants were invited to complete usability evaluation experiments. This paper combines touch and eye movement behavior representation for usability evaluation. Four methods-correlation analysis (CA), intrinsic feature importance (IFI), recursive feature elimination (RFE), and the SHAP-were used for feature selection. In combination with three classic models, a usability evaluation model for the interconnection between Automotive Intelligent cockpit and Extended equipment was established. The research results indicate that the features selected through CA-namely the Distance Moved Number of Samples, Not Moving Frequency, Not Moving Cumulative Duration, Task Duration, Task 1 (car machine) Number of Gazes, and Task 1 Total Glance Time-achieved the highest performance under the XGBoost model with an R2 of 0.742. This study established a mapping relationship between objective indicators and subjective usability, providing a theoretical foundation for enhancing the proactive perception capabilities of Automotive Intelligent cockpit. It has made an indelible contribution to further improving the intelligence level of Automotive Intelligent cockpit.