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IntroductionAutomated vehicles need to gain the trust of all road users in order to be accepted. To make technology trustworthy, automated vehicles must transmit crucial information to pedestrians through a human-machine interface, allowing pedestrians to accurately predict and act on their next behavior. However, the unsolved core issue in the field of vehicle automation is to know how to successfully communicate with pedestrians in a way that is efficient, comfortable, and easy to understand. This study investigated the impact of three human-machine interfaces specifically designed for pedestrians' trust during the street crossing in front of an automated vehicle. The interfaces used different communication channels to interact with pedestrians, i.e., through a new road infrastructure, an external human-machine interface with anthropomorphism, or with conventional road signaling.MethodsMentally projected in standard and non-standard use cases of human-machine interfaces, 731 participants reported their feelings and behavior through an online survey.ResultsResults showed that human-machine interfaces were efficient to improve trust and willingness to cross the street in front of automated vehicles. Among external human-machine interfaces, anthropomorphic features showed significant advantages in comparison with conventional road signals to induce pedestrians' trust and safer crossing behaviors. More than the external human-machine interfaces, findings highlighted the efficiency of the trust-based road infrastructure on the global street crossing experience of pedestrians with automated vehicles.DiscussionAll of these findings support trust-centered design to anticipate and build safe and satisfying human-machine interactions.

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Future thinking (FT) is the cognitive ability that enables humans to mentally imagine and pre-experience future events. Despite a sharp increase in basic research on future thinking in the last decade, we note the lack of transfer to Human Factors and Ergonomics (HF&E), although the field is increasingly concerned by future artefacts and although theory building on future-oriented HF&E has begun (e.g., prospective ergonomics). This article gives an overview of key findings regarding future thinking, namely i) underlying cognitive mechanisms, ii) functions and obstacles, iii) common descriptors of future thinking, iv) recommendations as to the possible improvement of future thinking during user research and, v) methods for the assessment of future thinking abilities. This synthesis can support HF&E practitioners in fine-tuning their future-oriented methods.