The PGIRec Software to Support the Evaluation of User-System Interaction with a Synchronous and Multi-perspective Recording System

Abstract

Audiovisual recording is a highly relevant activity when investigating and analyzing qualitative data, both for scientific researches and for the industry. Games are a particularly challenging application for user experience and interaction evaluation, given the multitude of platforms, modes of operation, number of players and game environments that may occur through different games genres. This diversity of interaction possibilities makes it difficult for employing current audiovisual recording tools in a number of scenarios, especially considering multi-user interaction in the same or in separate environments. In this context, this paper presents an open-source recording tool, called Player-Game Interaction Recorder (PGIRec), specialized in synchronous recording of multiple sources of audio and video. The software was evaluated using brain-computer interface games in two different studies, with a total of 22 participants and over 16 hours of recorded activities using different experimental setups. The evaluation showed that the solution was stable and adaptable, since it generated audiovisual media without occurrences in different situations, with multiple audio and video sources concurrently.