After the industrial revolution, society’s well-being gained importance.
The ever-increasing shift from rural to urban workplaces, however, requires workers to endure time consuming and stressful commutes to and from work. In the near future, automated vehicles may present the first opportunity to engage in relaxing activities during one’s commute and/or use the time productively to shorten a workday. As Perterer et al [5] and several others [2, 6] show, drivers already do so today and want to increasingly do so with automated vehicles. However, a range of safety (e.g., take-over requests, [13]), human factors and ergonomic [8], and ethical and societal questions (Can my boss force me to use my commutes productively without reducing inoffice hours?) have to be answered to realize this opportunity in a way beneficial to society. As recent (fatal) incidents have shown (Uber, Tesla, . . . ), people will engage in so-called non-driving related tasks (NDRTs) during automated phases, whether the level of automation (cf. SAE J3016, [11]) is high enough to safely do so or not; industry puts these cars on the streets and ultimately on the market, despite mentioned fatal experiences of the past. Hence, it’s researchers’ responsibility to connect to a joint effort in solving problems of situation awareness, motion sickness but also user experience and ethical / societal issues, amongst many other. While recent workshops and publications at CHI [4, 7], and specialized CHI conferences (e. g., AutomotiveUI [9]), have shown growing interest, we believe that there is still a need to expand research based on this initial work since many issues remain unsolved [12]. This special interest group (SIG)’s mission is, thus, to provide a platform for establishing new and deepening existing collaborations between a broad range of HCI researchers, as well as facilitating the creation of new ideas. The ultimate goal is to jointly define a research agenda as a community.