Immersive Study Analyzer: Collaborative Immersive Analysis of Recorded Social VR Studies

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) has become an important tool for conducting behavioral studies in realistic, reproducible environments. In this paper, we present ISA, an Immersive Study Analyzer system designed for the comprehensive analysis of social VR studies. For in-depth analysis of participant behavior, ISA records all user actions, speech, and the contextual environment of social VR studies. A key feature is the ability to review and analyze such immersive recordings collaboratively in VR, through support of behavioral coding and user-defined analysis queries for efficient identification of complex behavior. Respatialization of the recorded audio streams enables analysts to follow study participants' conversations in a natural and intuitive way. To support phases of close and loosely coupled collaboration, ISA allows joint and individual temporal navigation, and provides tools to facilitate collaboration among users at different temporal positions. An expert review confirms that ISA effectively supports collaborative immersive analysis, providing a novel and effective tool for nuanced understanding of user behavior in social VR studies.