The Mobile Pass Project: A User Interaction Evaluation

The Mobile Pass project focused its efforts on developing a technologically advanced mobile equipment for land border crossing points. During the project execution, a mobile device supporting biometric recognition (face and fingerprint) and passport checking was designed and developed. To test this new equipment under an operational environment, a usability evaluation was carried out in the Sculeni border control (border of Romania with Moldavia), being the operators Romanian Policemen and the data subjects' real volunteer travelers. The equipment was used for 2 days under different conditions in real scenarios, and the usability evaluation carried out follows the ISO 9241-11:1998 standard. A total of 93 participants completed the new border checking and fulfilled a satisfaction survey at the end of the experiment. This paper describes the evaluation and reports some preliminary results on the user-Automatic Border Control system interaction and the final conclusions obtained at the end of the project, resulting in a valuable guide for designing user interaction in security areas.

I. Introduction

Border control is currently one of the most worrisome topics within the European Union (EU) and many other parts in the world [1]–[4]. In the case of EU, illegal entrance in a country may guarantee the free movement through the whole EU area and triggers the necessity to increase the control in the Schengen borders. More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, mostly due to conflict in countries, such as Syria, Afghanistan, or Iraq. The vast majority of the asylum applications in EU and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states arrived by sea but some migrants crossed over land, principally via Turkey and Albania. This concern highlights the necessity of analyzing and solving all the possible issues related to border crossing. The increasing flow of people on borders involves a reduction of time for border services to check travel documents and identity [5], increasing the risk of fraud. More generally, reasons of fraud are linked not only to the advantages to cross borders but also to perform crimes under another identity, get undue social allocations, etc. All the process triggers high costs, including production costs and social costs, and further resources.