User brain-driven evaluation of an educational 3D virtual environment

In evaluating interactive systems, several attempts have been made to broaden the traditional focus on the efficient achievement of goals and incorporate an understanding of additional aspects linked to the User eXperience (UX). In this direction, usability tests also based on the users emotional level should be performed. This requires the introduction of suitable methods which can capture and convert subjective feelings into concrete design parameters. In this paper we propose a user-centered approach to the evaluation of the UX in a 3D Educational Virtual Environment, in which the user is required to explore reconstructions of cultural places and to solve games for educational purposes by using innovative controllers. We employ a commercial Brain Computer Interface to collect information on the users feelings. The preliminary results of this research show that our method allows the identification of elements that do not result in high subject agreement in terms of elicited emotions. Moreover, it provides the opportunity to redesign the environment. The domain-independent nature of the presented approach allows designers to apply it in a wide range of 3D interactive environments, such as games and serious games, training simulators, etc.