Evaluating Different Display Techniques for Communicating Search Strategy Training in a Collaborative Virtual Aircraft Inspection Environment

Aircraft inspection is vital to assure safe and reliable air transportation. Search strategy training has been recognized to be effective in improving an inspector's performance in a visual inspection task. Improving the search performance of novice inspectors can be expedited by providing cognitive feedfoward information about the search strategy adopted by an expert inspector. In a collaborative virtual aircraft inspection environment using eye tracking equipment, novice inspectors can observe in real time the point of regard (POR) data of an expert inspector performing an inspection task. This research evaluates the effectiveness of three display techniques —‘dot’, ‘ray casting’ and ‘decaying trace’ – for representing, the gaze slaved visual deictic reference (VDR) of the expert inspector during search strategy training in an aircraft inspection task. Increase in performance of the novices performing an inspection task after training show the ‘decaying trace’ as the most effective form for representing the expert's VDR.