The trend today is to produce automobiles that have exciting systems which enhance the users' driving experiences, however, the distraction potential of these systems has not fully been considered. Since visually demanding tasks carry the highest degree of risk, relative to other categories of tasks, the instrument panel in the private vehicle is a logical starting point for further research. The aim of this study is, from an instrumentation design point of view, to gain a better understanding of how respondents perceive the importance of different driver information and their placement. In a questionnaire study conducted on three different automobile markets, China, Sweden, and United States of America, respondents stated perceived importance and preferred placement (head-up display (HUD), head-down display (HDD), infotainment (IF), and center-stack (CS)) of warnings, driving information, and in-vehicle technologies. The Swedish respondents preferred traditional features and placements and the US safety features concerned driving conditions placed at the HUD location, while the Chinese varied hugely in what was important as well as placements. Besides comfort, safety was quite important for all groups although the Swedish respondents did place a lesser emphasis on safety than the others did.

Several textbooks on systematic product development and design methodology have been published during the nineties. This literature, in English, is to a large extent based on recent international design research. However, these textbooks are primarily of more abstract character, treating only the product development process and design methodology. In Scandinavia, there has been a lack of a modern textbook on Product Development and Design in a Scandinavian language, particularly for the shorter educational programs (bachelor level) in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Design. Besides the product development process and design support methods, also industrial design and engineering design should be treated; materials selection and dimensioning, production methods, quality, robust design and tolerances, design of experiments, computer modelling and simulation, optimisation, visualisation and communication, creativity support, cost calculations, project planning/handling, intellectual property and patents. A new modern textbook in Swedish covering most topics related to product development and product realisation as listed above, written by the authors of this paper, was introduced in Sweden in 2005. This book was originally intended as a basic text for educational programs in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design Engineering on bachelor level, but it is now also used for educational programs on master level (civilingenjör). The focus has been on synthesis, but some chapters also cover analysis e.g. by means of computer modelling and simulation for concept evaluation. The intention has been to give a broad overview of the various topics in Engineering Design and Industrial Design. A comprehensive chapter on Design theory and methodology, based on recent design research in Sweden (in particular at Chalmers University of Technology) and in the Nordic countries has also been included. This chapter, covering fundamental issues like functional decomposition, function means tree, coupling analysis by DSM-matrices, requirements handling etc. will be of specific interest for master programs in Engineering design. So far, this book has been well accepted in Sweden. 769 books have been delivered, by April 2006. This paper presents a brief overview of the contents, as well as some feedback from its use in different types of engineering programs in Sweden.