Mobile services for truck drivers

Abstract

The thesis has been done at Volvo Technology Corp in Gothenburg and the goal was to discover interesting truck driver services that can be used in the truck driver profession. The services should be executed on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), related to the work done by the drivers when they are outside of the truck. A lot of theories have been used as a base for our study. All work has been carried out in correspondence with methods for the following areas; literature studies, field studies, analysis of problem areas, and design, implementation, and test of a software prototype on a PDA. When all literature studies, own conducted field studies, and some part of the analysis phase were completed, we had come up with a large number of ideas. All ideas were further analysed and of them were five services selected. These services are named: Load Indicator, Consignment Note, Drivers Manual, Friend Finder, Keyless entry and Alarm. Load Indicator is a service that helps the driver to keep track that the maximum cargo weight for the truck is not exceeded. Our Consignment Note, involves all handling of the notes in a digital form, i.e. no paper is needed. Drivers Manual is the digital version of the manual shown on the PDA. Friend Finder is a service that keeps track of a driver’s colleagues and friends. Keyless entry includes services that handle automatic locking/unlocking of the truck door and automatic handling of the trucks spot and load lights. Finally, if the burglary attempt is made on the truck and an alarm is raised this alarm will also be shown on the PDA in the Alarm service. In the design of the above services, the end-users were in focus. The end-users are truck drivers usually not that familiar with computers (especially PDAs). Their work is also conducted, to a large extent, outside of the truck. Thus, our design is characterized with “usability” for that particular end-user group, with for example the use of large designed “Buttons” and the use of keystrokes on the PDA