The use of eye tracking in the study of airline cabin safety communication

Abstract

The purpose of this study is intended to address the current state of comprehensibility of airline safety briefing cards by adopting the eye-tracking experimental method and comprehension test to solve the relationship between comprehensibility and fixations of airline safety briefing cards. The Land Evacuation Section of a safety card was selected to measure respondents' eye movements together with a survey to test the comprehension of pictorials/pictograms. 51 subjects participated with this study. The results indicate that the universal situation that safety information is not well transferred to passengers and potential passengers. The result of study also showe that the pictograms related to "how to operate emergency door" took the longest fixation time and fixation counts, yet with the highest comprehension score. Meanwhile, other pictorials also showed the positive correlation between their comprehensibility and fixation time and fixation counts. The implications from these results were discussed. It is hoped that the present work will generate interest in the designer and user for providing guidance in the development of cabin safety briefing card. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.