Understanding and Designing Avatar Biosignal Visualizations for Social Virtual Reality Entertainment

Conference Paper (2022)
Author(s)

Sueyoon Lee (Student TU Delft, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI))

Abdallah El El Ali (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI))

M.W.A. Wijntjes (TU Delft - Human Technology Relations)

Pablo Cesar (TU Delft - Multimedia Computing, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI))

Research Group
Human Technology Relations
Copyright
© 2022 Sueyoon Lee, Abdallah El Ali, M.W.A. Wijntjes, Pablo Cesar
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517451
More Info
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Publication Year
2022
Language
English
Copyright
© 2022 Sueyoon Lee, Abdallah El Ali, M.W.A. Wijntjes, Pablo Cesar
Research Group
Human Technology Relations
ISBN (electronic)
978-1-4503-9157-3
Reuse Rights

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Abstract

Visualizing biosignals can be important for social Virtual Reality (VR), where avatar non-verbal cues are missing. While several biosignal representations exist, designing effective visualizations and understanding user perceptions within social VR entertainment remains unclear. We adopt a mixed-methods approach to design biosignals for social VR entertainment. Using survey (N=54), context-mapping (N=6), and co-design (N=6) methods, we derive four visualizations. We then ran a within-subjects study (N=32) in a virtual jazz-bar to investigate how heart rate (HR) and breathing rate (BR) visualizations, and signal rate, influence perceived avatar arousal, user distraction, and preferences. Findings show that skeuomorphic visualizations for both biosignals allow differentiable arousal inference; skeuomorphic and particles were least distracting for HR, whereas all were similarly distracting for BR; biosignal perceptions often depend on avatar relations, entertainment type, and emotion inference of avatars versus spaces. We contribute HR and BR visualizations, and considerations for designing social VR entertainment biosignal visualizations.