Evaluating Avatar Designs for On-Person Screening in Aviation Security

Abstract

In aviation security, on-person screening quality is dependent on security screeners accurately translating the location of a digital 2D alarm to a 3D passenger using mental spatial scaling. Currently, security screeners are shown an alarm on a generic human figure (avatar) designed to protect passenger privacy. The problem is that the avatar may be overly generic and it can be challenging for security screeners to quickly and confidently locate the threat. To compensate, security screeners may increase their search area to guarantee that the threat is found. In prior work, an avatar design with relevant landmarks improved location accuracy. For this study, we compared the redesigned avatar to three other avatar designs that are used by on-person screening vendors. The results of the study showed that screeners had significantly smaller search areas (30% smaller) and were closer to the true target location (15% closer) when using the redesigned avatar.