Introduction to EyeLights

Smartphones have brought us convenience and beneficial impacts, but it has also brought about fatal distractions. Research has shown that 1 out of 4 accidents is due to distractions on the phone while driving. Accidents also negatively affect the environment through the up to 75 million tonnes of C02 emitted by car repairs and car manufacturing. Until the introduction of EyeLights, which utilizes AR to display visualizations of information from a smartphone to prevent any unnecessary distractions from the road. Users are able to view information, such as their speed, arrows to signify the direction to take, indicators that notify that they are too close to another car in front of them as well as other features. As a motor enthusiast myself, I look forward to any technological advancements to better the experience of driving, which explains why EyeLights caught my attention. Though the display that EyeLights provide is nothing compared to Iron Man’s helmet, it still signals the start of the futuristic display design that may be used by future vehicles, which I am all for. Additionally, it makes use of commonly known design language to perform different actions to interact with the connected smartphone such as:

• Turning on EyeLights: Hold button for 2 seconds
• Pause/Resume music, receive/hang up calls: Press button once

This design would thus allow for a fuss-free onboarding of new users.

EyeLights’ experience

It presents a high level of engagement as users are able to view the extra layer of virtual information to make decisions in real life, such as making the turn when EyeLights display an arrow to turn the corner. On top of that, users are able to interact with supported functions of the connected smartphone device, such as activating the voice assistant or displaying the map.

However, this would mean that the UI design of the visualization layer has to be iconic enough such that users would understand what the different symbols represent. The reason is because different countries might adopt different road signs and symbols that EyeLights might not have considered (EyeLights is based in France). This could lead to the unintended effect of confusing the new user and might cause a fatal accident.

Therefore, an improvement would be to present tooltips for first-time users to understand all the visual icons of EyeLights so that the visual icons would rather help them than be a distraction. An even better improvement would be to support functions based on the location the user is driving in so that visual cues of EyeLights compliments the road system of the location.

Overall, though some improvements can be made to EyeLights for a more enhanced experience for motorists, it still serves as an effective AR application that could disrupt how road information could be visualized to users, which would soon include car drivers too.

Citations

Impact. EyeLights | Affichage tête haute Moto. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2023, from https://eye-lights.com/en/pages/notre-impact

Mamun. (2022, May 30). Eyelights Eyeride motorcycle helmet user guide. Manuals+. Retrieved January 20, 2023, from https://manuals.plus/eyelights/eyeride-motorcycle-helmet-manual#axzz7qtvC27l0