Abstract:
The importance of evaluating user experience (UX) for different types of application is increasing gradually and so are the varieties of methods of UX evaluation. Among various
application context, interactive and entertaining computing systems are one of the dominant
application context these days. In order to keep the interactive computing and entertaining
systems sustainable in business, satisfying the user needs is a must, while UX evaluation
plays a vital role in this respect. Again, user experience of gaming context as a part of interactive entertaining system is largely impacted by users’ emotions. Among various types of
games, serious game is a particular type which provides some purpose along with common
gaming entertainment; for example, a simulation game for healthcare training program.
The existing literature shows that UX evaluation of serious games are mostly carried out
using subjective methods (questionnaires, survey). Thus, the objectives of this thesis are
firstly, to show how objective methods (neurological and physiological measures) can be
used to infer users’ emotional experience. Secondly, whether there exists any correlation
between neurological and physiological measures. To attain these objectives, a machine
learningbased approach considering both the neurological and physiological measures is
proposed to evaluate the users’ emotions (UX) while playing serious game. The proposed
approach is simulated through an experimental study with 25 participants to evaluate UX of
an educational serious game –‘Programming Hero’. The finding of the study indicates that
neurological and physiological measures can infer users’ emotions as well as a correlation
exists to some extent between neurological and physiological data while evaluating UX of
serious games.
