From Dashboard to Delight: How Interior Automobile Design Shapes Perceived User Experience

Abstract

Though the interior of the car is now a major differentiating factor for many brands, designers and researchers are still designing the automobile cabin as an issue of packaging, ergonomics and feature provision. This paper addresses the question of how the user experience is influenced by the interior design and why the functional adequacy is no longer enough to guarantee it. We propose Cabin Experience Model (CXM) by investigating and integrating the results of user-experience research, product-experience research, Kansei-engineering research, automotive human-machine-interface research, perceived-quality research, and customer-experience research. The model is based on three assumptions: cabin experience is layered; that from sensory and ergonomic aspects, to cognitive, through interaction, to emotional and symbolic levels, and coherence of attributes, not the quality of any single attribute, governs perceived cabin experience; and that cabin experience is not evaluated at one moment in time but unfolds over an ownership journey. The CXM is a combination of a first-contact-lived-use-enduring-bond loop, a perceived-experience spine, and three design enablers. Five propositions in the form of hypotheses, a PRISMA-reported review protocol, a transparent figure-coding procedure and the appendix of the validation instruments (survey, Delphi and clinic) are included. The paper presents a multi-layered, tripod experience of the interior, redefines coherence as the key design element, and provides implications to the automotive design, automotive brand management, and human factors evaluation.