Chat or Tap? Comparing Chatbots with 'Classic' Graphical User Interfaces for Mobile Interaction with Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand Systems

Abstract

In autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) systems, passengers will solely interact with autonomous vehicles via digital user interfaces (UIs). Hence, UIs are crucial for acceptance and user experience (UX). As a foundation for deriving empirically grounded design guidelines, we investigate two approaches for mobile interaction: chatbots and graphical UIs (GUIs). We evaluated prototypes of both in expert studies (nGUI = 6; nChatbot = 5) and a between-subjects simulator user study (n = 34). The latter enabled participants to experience a complete AMoD journey. While both concepts receive good acceptance and positive UX evaluations, the GUI results in significantly higher attractiveness and user satisfaction ratings. A significant interaction effect reveals a higher intention to use the chatbot in scenarios with a change of plans, but the GUI in g scenarios. Interview data and emotion curves support this effect. Balancing the concepts"advantages and disadvantages, we provide design recommendations and propose to use GUI-based mobile applications with integrated (text-based) conversational elements for future human-AMoD interaction.