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Communication is vital to the successful delivery of freight. A product that uses the latest communications technology, and makes that technology easily accessible to a driver would be a great benefit to the trucking industry. This paper focuses on the iterative design process of such a product called the Truck Productivity Computer™ (TruckPC). The TruckPC is a combination of an audio system, which includes radio, CD and weather, and an open platform communications and computing system. This paper discusses the driver-centered design process that was used in the development of both software and hardware interfaces. Topics discussed include the human factors guidelines that provided a basis for early design values and testing that concerned the design of the user input modes (buttons, knobs, speech recognition) and output modes (display, division of information on the display, text-to-speech synthesis).

Electroluminescent (EL) displays are well known for their superior visual performance (brightness and contrast) and environmental performance (durability) characteristics. These characteristics contributed to Freightliner Corporation's selection of Planar Systems, Inc. to build a custom electroluminescent display that measures 80 pixels in height and 320 pixels in width for their Truck Productivity Computer. The Truck Productivity Computer is an open-platform information, communication, and integration system that fits in a standard (DIN 1) radio slot in a truck dashboard. When compared to most conventional in-vehicle displays, the emissive EL technology offers increased brightness and contrast ratio. Considering these advantages and the type of information to be displayed, traditional human factors display guidelines, based primarily on other display types, were thought to be unsuitable for recommending character height for this display.