HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING IN THE DESIGN OF INTELLIGENT TRAVEL SYSTEMS

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) administers transportation policy and improvement in the Virginia Commonwealth. VDOT initiated interests in this project to analyze available intelligent transportation system (ITS) websites for feedback on their overall usefulness. Most metropolitan areas offer some version of an online information device by which local commuters can attain traffic information, and most of those websites vary drastically from one another, both in the way they present information and the kind of information they present. Currently, real-time traffic websites are being under-utilized, according to VDOT's expectations. This under-utilization, VDOT surmises, is undesirable for a number of reasons. First, they have invested resources into making this policy effort a success. Secondly, it was assumed at the outset that these real-time traffic sites can go a long way in alleviating traffic, thus cutting down commuting times, mitigating commuting accidents, and, in the long-run, leading to a much more prosperous population. The problem VDOT is faced with is that these results are not being realized and they want to know why. This project is an exploration in human factors engineering as a tool for creating improved usability strategies for ITS design. Human factors engineering is a staged process and this project evolves around stages of testing, development and analysis. Upon working through the testing stages, clear design recommendations emerged that will ultimately lead to higher usability, higher utilization and safer roads. Those recommendations include more simplistic interface design and the integration or more user-specific features.