Development and Evaluation of a Forensic Exhibit for Science Centres

Abstract

A new hands-on experiment was devised for science centres to demonstrate EvoFIT, a facial-composite system used by police with witnesses to construct facial likenesses of villains. Visitors watch a video of a man pretending to commit a crime and then construct a composite of his face by repeatedly selecting from an array of faces, with the software 'breeding' together choices to evolve a face. The new hands-on EvoFIT (Version D) takes a few minutes to complete compared with an hour or so for the police version. It has many differences from its first incarnation in 2007 (Version A): some changes incorporated recent improvements in the EvoFIT program, such as adding the hair last, while others improved engagement of the visitors and incorporated an attractive Graphical User Interface (GUI). Two main evaluations of the hands-on EvoFIT were carried out. Firstly, we compared the original exhibit (Version A) with one where external features such as hair were added at the end (Version B). Both were enjoyed by users and given similar likenesses for faces created. Secondly, we evaluated the effect of adding a new GUI and holistic tools (Versions C and D) to allow visitors to adjust features such as age and face weight. Again, use of the exhibit with and without the holistic tools were both enjoyed and gave better likenesses than the previous versions evaluated.