Combination of physiological and subjective measures to assess quality of experience for audiovisual technologies

Abstract

The competitive context in which the number of new audiovisual services increases requires taking user preferences into account to maintain the best possible quality of experience. The aim of the experiment presented in this paper is to study how standardized ITU subjective measures may be supplemented by physiological measurements. Subjective assessments (ITU-T P.920, P.911) and physiological measurements (Blood Volume Pulse, Temperature, Skin Conductance and Eye Tracking) are collected from 34 subjects viewing three different 2D audiovisual contents. Each content was presented under three different quality conditions: a reference one (without degradation) and two degraded ones (audio/video asynchrony or bitrates variations on audio and/or video). Results show an impact of quality variations on the subjective data but not on physiological measures. It might be explained by this first exploratory protocol (degradation, thresholds, content presentation layout, etc.) proposed to study audiovisual quality impact on physiological activity.