Emotions appraisal with face reading in a touristic virtual environment prototype

Abstract

User engagement is an essential condition for assessing the quality of an interactive experience. Nowadays, the tourism industry has been using experiences based on interactive proposals to involving users. However, tourism industry needs more effective strategies in the dissemination of the cultural contents, whether material or immaterial, and in particular in emerging countries such as the São Tomé and Príncipe Islands. In this context, how can the tourism industry offer contents capable to provide levels of engagement able to attract potential tourists to visit these tourist spots. And so, the development of immersive proposals in a virtual environment, can play an important role to engage potential tourists. In this context, this article has as primary goal the evaluating how 3D environments and interaction strategy can influence the emotional reactions of potential users of this product. In particular, we want to know if this virtual environment is capable of involving participants and provide interactive experiences capable to seducing and arousing interest in the islands. This evaluation was made using the Face-Reading tool, Self-Assessment-Mannequin (SAM) and Geneva Emotion wheel (GEW). The data collection tools used (Face-Reading, SAM and GEW) allowed to identify differences between the different moments of the game interaction, and they also presented similar results. In conclusion, Face-Reading achieves a level of continuous discrimination of the user experience, particularly in relation to engagement, allowing a better identification of the moments associated with the emotional reactions.