What do Italian drivers want from tomorrow’s car infotainment systems?

by Wolfgang Waxenberger , 12.01.2015

In a competitive global marketplace, one key way for auto manufacturers to keep customers satisfied is to anticipate and meet their future wants and desires. We asked drivers what multi-media and entertainment features they might want in tomorrow’s car.What they wanted differed by market – sometimes a little, but for some factors quite significantly. This means car manufacturers need to adapt their models for each country, and to do that they need to understand those market differences.

What do Italian drivers want from future car infotainment systems?

The top three future feature requirements in Italy mirrored those of the other three countries in the study (Germany, the US and Japan): easy to access voice support/information systems, color head up display, and infotainment systems compatible with different operating systems (like iOS, Android, Windows 8).

However, more so than in any other market, there was significant interest in the entire range of new features that respondents were presented with in the Italian survey. Highly desired future features by the Italian market included waterproof/spill-proof interior vehicle electrics, passenger head-up display with a functionality that includes watching movies, tablet PC as a full replacement to a built-in infotainment system, gesture control and being able to video conference in-car. In contrast, German and Japanese drivers are far less interested in waterproof/spill-proof interior vehicle electrics, gesture control and the ability to video conference in-car.

This research formed part of a wider project looking at user experience with the human machine interface (HMI) in vehicles. For each market we identified which car brands performed the best for in-car entertainment. We probe for three qualities in the UX score: task-oriented which relate to the operation and learnability of the way the product works; self-oriented which refer to the feelings of belonging and inspiration that the product creates, and aesthetic qualities which refers to the look, feel and sound of the car. Overall UX benchmark in Italy is the highest in our study at 4.7 compared to 4.3 globally, and 3.8 for Japan, the lowest in the study.

About the survey

The UX Score is based on a ten-question survey administered after a user has interacted with a product. The UX Score provides a measure that can be used to track experiences over time, better understand product loyalty or market share, or compare HMIs. GfK carried out online interviews with 3,776 drivers aged 18 years old and over, across four countries: USA, Japan, Germany and Italy. The fieldwork was executed in December 2013 and the data were weighted to be gender and age representative for car drivers with one or more cars in the household within the online population.