An ADAS Safety Debrief feature is designed for in-vehicle and companion apps. It helps drivers review snapshots of how ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems) intervened to prevent collisions, making each trip feel clearer, safer, and more reassuring.
Timeline
4 months
Team Members
Emily (me)，Anita， Richa
My Responsibility
I led research to identify trust and usability issues in AEB feedback, including heuristic evaluation, expert and user interviews, and insight synthesis. I also collaborated with the team to shape design directions based on our findings.
Project overview
Many drivers don't fully understand how or when Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) systems engage, which raises questions about their reliability and relevance.
Our team set out to explore how post-collision feedback delivered through a mobile app could improve driver understanding and build long-term trust in AEB. Through heuristic evaluation, expert interviews, and user research, we identified key barriers to trust and prototyped communication strategies that translate system behavior into human-centered insights.
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are rapidly transforming how we drive.
ADAS are making everyday travel smarter, safer, and more predictive. As the automotive industry moves toward automation, the potential impact is massive:
Drivers are not ready for ADAS.
As ADAS features like AEB, ACC, and LKA become standard in modern vehicles, user trust and understanding remain critical yet lacking. To gauge driver sentiment, we surveyed 49 participants and found widespread skepticism toward these systems.
Given AEB’s role as a last-line defense in collision prevention, and its relatively higher distrust rate, we chose to narrow our scope and focus on improving driver trust and understanding specifically around AEB systems.
How might we...
enhance drivers’ trust & understanding of AEB so that they can drive safely & confidently?
Heuristic Evaluation
Benchmarking the Present to Design for the Future.
To create forward-looking design innovations, we first needed to understand how today’s leading automotive brands structure their HMI and omnichannel experiences.
Using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics alongside 12 UX and automotive design principles, we evaluated ADAS-related settings and feedback systems from 12 major automakers.
Learn From Efficient Navigation & Easy Understanding of Contents
01
Navigation Efficiency
Minimizing distraction in ADAS design requires both smart interaction (like finite scrolling and custom ordering) and ergonomic placement (like steering wheel controls and reachable screens).
02
Ease of understanding
Use illustrations, visual feedback, and clear system status to enhance understanding.
Improve Affordances & Documentation
01
Navigation Efficiency
Lack of selection indicator, descriptive texts/messages, reliance on abbreviations, unclear status.
02
Ease of understanding
Additional warnings are not presented in car when the driver changes a critical setting.
SME Interviews
Expert Insights on Why Drivers Still Don’t Trust AEB.
Through interviews with ADAS designers from Toyota, we uncovered four recurring themes that explain why trust in AEB remains fragile.
From the interviews, we also gain insights on what opportunities exist for design to make a difference.
These insights revealed a clear opportunity: post-collision feedback isn’t just about reviewing an event; it’s a moment to teach, reassure, and reconnect users with the system. This shaped our goal to create a mobile experience that transforms uncertainty into clarity and confusion into confidence.
User Interviews
Even After AEB Events, Users Remain Unclear About How It Works.
In addition to expert insights, real-world driver experiences were essential to our understanding.We interviewed 6 drivers who currently operate hybrid vehicles and have experienced AEB interventions firsthand.
All participants fit our target user segment, defined by the following criteria:
Design for Understanding, But Also for Reassurance.
Nearly all drivers we interviewed recalled feeling shaken, confused, and surprised by the AEB activation.
This emotional response led us to prioritize designs that support not just understanding, but also reassurance and calm after the event.
Ideation
Shifting Platforms: From In-Car HMI to Mobile App.
Based on our research direction, designing post-AEB education and awareness snippets, we initially envisioned integrating this feature into the car's built-in HMI.
However, what if the driver exits the vehicle immediately after the incident?
To address this, we shifted our focus to the car companion app, a platform that’s increasingly becoming a central touchpoint in the automotive experience.
More and more automakers are investing in their mobile apps to extend services beyond the vehicle. See the studies from Gminsights below:
However, we realized that a review alone wasn’t enough to build trust.
To do so, we needed to go beyond feedback, offering drivers clearer system transparency, emotional reassurance, and opportunities to better understand AEB.
There was an ongoing debate within the team around which data points to include and how to best structure them to support both clarity and emotional impact.
Concept Iteration 1 - Global View of ADAS Settings
Focused on a global view, showing the status of all ADAS features throughout the trip. An approach aligned with long-term scalability and applicable beyond AEB to other systems like ACC and LKA.
Concept Iteration 2 - AEB Event Reviews
Focused on providing a detailed record and review of a specific AEB event, aiming to build trust by showing how the system reduced the likelihood of a collision, expressed as a percentage.
Concept Iteration 3 - AEB Impacts
Focused on highlighting the impact of AEB by presenting multiple data points that illustrate how the system helped prevent a potential collision during this trip, reinforcing trust through clear, outcome-driven evidence.
Introduce to AEB Safety Debrief
01. Safety Event Logging
Automatically captures all ADAS-triggered safety events, with a focus on AEB incidents in this project.
02. Trust Building Through Guidance
Highlights how AEB helped avoid potential collisions, supported by simple system explanations and usage tips to build user confidence and encourage continued learning.
03. Incident Review & Reflection
Provides clear, contextual snapshots of each AEB activation to help users understand what happened and reflect on their experience.
Usability Testing
Better Content Strategy, More Trustworthy
In user testing, we focused on which data and content helped drivers better understand and trust AEB. We found that our data collection was strong, but some of the content may need minor adjustments.
