Research Proposal: Analyzing and Understanding Embodied Interactions in Virtual Reality Systems

Virtual reality (VR) offers opportunities in human-computer interaction research, to embody users in immersive environments and observe how they interact with 3D scenarios under well-controlled environments. VR content has stronger influences on users physical and emotional states as compared to traditional 2D media, however, a fuller understanding of this kind of embodied interaction is currently limited by the extent to which attention and behavior can be observed in a VR environment, and the accuracy at which these observations can be interpreted as, and mapped to, real-world interactions and intentions. This thesis aims at the creation of a system to help designers in the analysis of the entire user experience in VR environment: how they feel, what is their intentions when interacting with a certain object, provide them guidance based on their needs and attention. A controlled environment in which the user is guided will help to establish a better intersubjectivity between designer intention who created the experience and users who lived it and will lead to a more efficient analysis of the user behavior in VR systems for the design of better experiences. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Systems and tools for interaction design; • Computing methodologies → Virtual reality.