Evaluating virtual reality experience and performance: a brain based approach

The recent trend and parallel development/adoption of Virtual Reality, Brain Sensing Measures and associated technology such as Augmented Reality by large corporations, and the rise in the interests in the consumer market have set a positive tone for research in these disciplines. An important human factors area that is a catalyst to broad VR applications is the measure of perception, mental workload, and immersion amongst other issues, which are determining factors in the experience of using virtual environments. Traditional approaches in studying these issues use well-developed subjective measures via questionnaires. A new opportunity in the parallel developments in wearable physiological sensors such as brain scanners could potentially be an objective approach in resolving many subjective uncertainties amongst other prospects. Here, we propose the integration of these two emerging fields in order to provide a continuous, objective, physiological measure of an individual's VR experience for the purposes of enhancing user experience and improving performance. This positional paper attempts to merge two complementary field of work, and discusses implications which could potentially open up avenues of research which were traditionally difficult due to the limitations of equipment, or the lack of quantified approach.