Cross-Cultural Differences in the Use of In-vehicle Technologies and Vehicle Area Network Services: Austria, USA, and South Korea

Vehicle area network (VAN) communications and related services are getting more pervasive. However, even though user-centered design has been emphasized, VAN services have often been developed through a technology-driven approach. This paper presents cross-cultural survey results on VAN services in three different countries: Austria, USA, and South Korea. The current research compared the state-of-the-art of drivers’ current in-vehicle technology use and investigated their needs and wants for plausible new services in the near future. Further, we validated our next generation in-vehicle interface concepts stemming from our previous participatory design process. Results showed clear differences between Austrians vs. Americans and Koreans. Even though Koreans and Americans in our survey were older than Austrians, they seemed more open-minded to VAN services (e.g., social networks in car, V2V services, in-vehicle agent, etc) in general and rated them more positively. Through these cross-cultural needs analyses of end users, designers and practitioners are expected to gain insights into developing a standardized service across cultures as well as culturally tuned in-vehicle interfaces. Moreover, we hope that this initial international collaboration can serve as a good test bed for future research and hope to expand our consortium with more colleagues in the AutomotiveUI community for further cross-cultural studies.