A major example of the lack of effectiveness of traditional communication in the airline industry concerns passengers’ pre-flight briefings, safety briefing cards and videos. Studies in the literature have shown that they are unable to engage the attention of passengers, and comprehension of traditional instructions is below acceptable limits even in passengers who do pay attention, see for example DOT/FAA/AM-08/20. This serious lack of knowledge can lead to injuries and deaths in emergencies that would be instead survivable. 

Our team leverages the power of digital media to reinvent safety instructions, cabin safety training, and aviation education in novel ways, making them more effective as well as more engaging. In addition, we create innovative gamification solutions for airline, aircraft manufacturer and airport needs, for example for communication campaigns. 

Our work progresses along five, synergic lines:  

Interactive instructions and interactive communication

We exploit interactivity to improve safety instructions and aviation-related messages, turning the traditional, ineffective and passive experience of non-interactive media into an active, exploratory experience that can also provide personalized feedback to passengers, cabin crew or the general public, based on their behavior. For example, we have fully developed the world’s first interactive safety card.

Virtual reality

We explore how 3D worlds (on common displays as well as wearable, head-mounted displays) can improve engagement with and learning of aviation knowledge. We create different solutions, ranging from virtual characters that provide interactive safety briefings to fully immersive, first-person simulations of real-world scenarios, ranging from normal airport activities to reproductions of real aircraft accidents, in which users learn to face dangerous situations in safe conditions, including at home. Moreover, we exploit virtual reality to create amazing aviation-related experiences that can be used for airline, aircraft manufacturer or airport marketing and communication purposes.

Mobile Apps

We design innovative aviation apps that can run on personal mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, making content easily accessible to anyone. Users can access our mobile aviation experiences anytime, anywhere, increasing exposure time to the content, be it an m-learning (mobile learning) solution for cabin crew, an educational game or interactive safety instructions for passengers, or an entertainment gaming experience for airline, aircraft manufacturer or airport promotion.

Video Games

To engage passengers in the safety education experience, some of our tools include games for learning. Embedding knowledge in games, especially if they are designed in such a way that users want to play them repeatedly and for long times, paves the way to implicit learning and repetitive rehearsal, increasing knowledge retention. Gamification can also be used to make communication campaigns more fun, engaging, and attractive.

Persuasive Technology

Effective education and training interventions, as well as communication campaigns, are not limited to increasing knowledge, but extend to changing people’s attitudes towards the presented topics. The design and evaluation of our tools is guided by models of persuasion that take into account important recipient’s attitudes, for example self-efficacy, locus of control, and perceptions of various factors such as credibility, simplicity, engagement, attractiveness. In objectively evaluating such effects, we use also psychophysiology measurements such as EDA (electrodermal activity), EMG (electromyography), ECG (cardiac activity), and EEG (electroencephalography).