Car Exterior Surface Displays: Exploration in a Real-World Context

Current changes in the automotive industry towards autonomous vehicles will spur wide ranging changes in the roles of cars in urban environments. When combined with advances in display technology, this creates potential for the outer surfaces of cars to act as public displays. We present a real-world in context study, where participants ideated on a variety of different types of informative content, displayed on or around vehicles. Our study approach utilized handheld projection to create visualization experiences suggestive of the capabilities of future display technologies. The salient findings show that ideas related to the car and the driving function, such as parking, warning pedestrians and changing the vehicles aesthetic appearance, were appreciated. In contrast, ideas where the vehicle formed part of a smart urban infrastructure, such as guiding pedestrians or acting as a public display caused diverse opinions. In particular, concepts where personalized content was shown were disliked for reasons related to privacy and feeling like 'big brother' is watching.