“Capture Your Experience at This Moment”: Collecting Concurrent User Experience Data in Immersive Virtual Environment

Paper Title

“Capture Your Experience at This Moment”: Collecting Concurrent User Experience Data in Immersive Virtual Environment

Publication Info

• Topic area: User Experience (UX) data collection in immersive virtual environments (IVE)
• Keywords: UX data collection, immersive virtual environments, concurrent annotation, JourneyCapturer, spatial-temporal coupling, memory support, environmental anchoring, VR-based UX research, design goals, user study

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Traditional retrospective methods for UX data collection suffer from memory distortions and recall inaccuracies, compromising data authenticity and design decisions. Concurrent methods lack in-depth investigation and integration within immersive virtual environments (IVE).
• Significance: Improving UX data collection methods is critical for evidence-based design decisions, particularly in spatial environments where nuanced insights are often missed.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has explored retrospective methods like interviews and surveys, as well as concurrent methods such as think-aloud protocols and physiological monitoring. However, these approaches face limitations such as memory loss, cognitive burden, and lack of first-person experiential perspectives. IVE technology offers potential for concurrent, context-aware UX data collection, but existing studies primarily use IVE for retrospective evaluations rather than proactive concurrent methods.

Solution

• Proposed approach: JourneyCapturer, an interactive tool for concurrent UX data collection within IVE, designed to integrate real-time annotation and environmental anchoring.
• Novelty:
  1. Development of JourneyCapturer as a tool for spatial-temporal coupled UX data capture.
  2. Introduction of a consciously proactive concurrent UX collection method within IVE.
  3. Proposal of hierarchical guidelines for implementing proactive UX data collection across macro, meso, and micro levels.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted formative study with 34 participants to identify design goals.
  • Co-designed JourneyCapturer with six experts, incorporating feedback for iterative refinement.
  • Evaluated JourneyCapturer through a user study with 20 participants, comparing concurrent IVE annotation, retrospective interviews, and combined methods.
  • Developed a four-step UX collection workflow: immersive exploration, template creation, structured recording, and contextual analysis.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Concurrent IVE method improved UX data completeness, consistency, relevance, and insight generation compared to retrospective methods.
  • Combined method yielded the highest number of valuable insights but required more time and introduced redundancy.
  • JourneyCapturer scored 77.60 on SUS (grade B+), indicating high usability.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Concurrent IVE method reduced memory distortion and enhanced objectivity through environmental anchoring.
  • Improved immersion and memory vividness via multi-sensory stimulation and spatial progression.
  • Enabled deeper insights into accessibility and environmental design opportunities.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Mixed-method user study comparing three UX collection methods across two scenarios (subway and hospital).
  • Quantitative metrics: time spent, error rates, valuable insights, self-assessment questionnaires, immersion scores, and NASA-TLX workload.
  • Qualitative thematic analysis of participant feedback.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited generalizability due to demographic constraints and small sample size.
  • Challenges in cognitive scenario validation when virtual environments diverged from personal memories.
  • Future directions include expert collaboration during IVE sessions, flexible gestural annotation, scalable AR-based field studies, and multi-modal data integration.

Summary

This paper introduces JourneyCapturer, a tool for concurrent UX data collection within immersive virtual environments (IVE), addressing limitations of traditional retrospective methods. Through a formative study, co-design workshop, and user study, the authors demonstrate that the concurrent IVE method enhances data completeness, relevance, and objectivity by leveraging environmental anchoring and spatial-temporal coupling. Participants valued its immersive engagement and memory support capabilities but noted challenges with expression fluency and scenario validation. The study proposes hierarchical guidelines for proactive UX data collection and suggests future research directions, including expert collaboration, multi-modal analytics, and AR-based scalability. JourneyCapturer represents a significant advancement in UX research methodologies, enabling context-aware and structured data collection.