A rough BCI-based Assessment of User's Emotions for Interface Adaptation: Application to a 3D-Virtual- Environment Exploration Task

Abstract. In order to develop an Adaptive Virtual Environment (AVE), users ’ experience, their needs and preferences should be accounted. In the methodology we presented in this paper, to build a 3D Adaptive Virtual environment (AVE), we overcome the weaknesses of user-centered evaluation (UCE) traditional methods by employing a Brain Computer Interface (BCI): The proposed methodology aims at (I) supporting the design of an engaging overall experience for potential users, (II) enhancing the user experience by dynamically adapting the interaction to the user emotional state so that a more immersive interaction could result.

BCI-Based User-Centered Design for Emotionally-Driven User Experience

In order to develop a complex interactive system, user-centered evaluation (UCE) is an essential component. The new interaction paradigms encourage exploring new variables for accounting the users’ experience in terms of their needs and preferences. This is especially important for Adaptable Virtual Environments (AVE). In this context, to obtain a more engaging overall user’s experience, a good designer should perform proper formative and summative usability tests based on the user’s emotional level, which become a UCE activity. Our methodology tries to overcome the weaknesses of traditional methods by employing a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) to collect additional information on user’s needs and preferences. A set of preliminary usability experiments has been conducted for (i) determining if the outcome of a BCI is suitable to drive the designer in organizing the user-system dialog within AVE and (ii) evaluating the user-system dialog, in terms of dynamic increase of the emotionally-driven interaction’s customization.</jats:p