Design and Evaluation of Auxiliary Devices for Reducing Carsickness Caused by In-car Reading Activities

Abstract

Traveling by car has become a routine in our daily lives nowadays Carsickness is a specific form of motion sickness that often occurs while reading on a smartphone during travel It results from the sensory conflict between the visual vestibular and proprioceptive systems Taking anti-motion sickness medicine could be helpful However it can cause sleepiness and blurry vision Besides users prefer to perform various activities such as reading while traveling by car We suggest synchronizing users’ perceived visual information with actual car movement as a strategy to improve sensory integration and reduce the symptoms of carsickness The research explores users’ motivation for in-car non-driving tasks during travel and aims to solve carsickness symptoms from a physiological perspective We designed auxiliary devices using embodiment anticipation and awareness strategies To evaluate the devices with different strategies we conducted experiments in the field and analyzed the effectivity of the devices in reducing symptoms of motion sickness the efficiency of reading with the devices and overall user experiences The evaluation for motion sickness was done through self-reported questionnaires and physiological measurements including forehead galvanic skin response heart rate and postural instability The result shows that all strategies are beneficial for both carsickness and reading performance while the awareness strategy is most effective The experience shall be able to be applied in related design researches about motion sickness caused by future technologies such as autonomous cars and virtual reality

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Wei-Chi Chien (Supervisor)