Forefront Users' Experience Evaluation by Employing Together Virtual Reality and Electroencephalography: A Case Study on Cognitive Effects of Scents.

Marco Mancini,Gianluca Borghini,Ana Martinez,Stefano Menicocci,Enrica Modica,Elena Guastamacchia,Dario Rossi,Arianna Trettel,Gianluca Di Flumeri,Viviana Lupo,Giulia Cartocci,Fabio Babiloni,Patrizia Cherubino

doi:10.3390/brainsci11020256

Abstract

Scents have the ability to affect peoples’ mental states and task performance with to different extents. It has been widely demonstrated that the lemon scent, included in most all-purpose cleaners, elicits stimulation and activation, while the lavender scent elicits relaxation and sedative effects. The present study aimed at investigating and fostering a novel approach to evaluate users’ experience with respect to scents’ effects through the joint employment of Virtual Reality and users’ neurophysiological monitoring, in particular Electroencephalography. In particular, this study, involving 42 participants, aimed to compare the effects of lemon and lavender scents on the deployment of cognitive resources during a daily life experience consisting in a train journey carried out in virtual reality. Our findings showed a significant higher request of cognitive resources during the processing of an informative message for subjects exposed to the lavender scent with respect to the lemon exposure. No differences were found between lemon and lavender conditions on the self-reported items of pleasantness and involvement; as this study demonstrated, the employment of the lavender scent preserves the quality of the customer experience to the same extent as the more widely used lemon scent.

Highlights

IntroductionWe are witnessing a huge growth of Virtual Reality (VR) and its related applications as well as of the employment of VR in research contexts
Regarding the self-reported measures of pleasantness and involvement, the results showed no statistically significant differences for subjects exposed to the lavender scent in comparison to those ones exposed to the lemon scent
In a world where the lemon scent is typically used as an aroma for all-purpose cleaners, like those ones usually employed for the train cleaning, the results provided by this study indicate the lavender scent as a powerful alternative capable to elicit a greater amount of cognitive resources during the environment processing than the lemon scent

Summary

Introduction

We are witnessing a huge growth of Virtual Reality (VR) and its related applications as well as of the employment of VR in research contexts. The technological advances performed by the gaming industry allow researchers to design highly immersive virtual environments (HIVE) by means of game engines, such as Unity3D [1] and Unreal. Game engines have become widely used to develop HIVE which, differently from common cartography criteria [3], allow for the representation of geospatial data in VR with a high detail level generating the vivid illusion of being in a virtually mediated environment, a phenomena that has been called spatial presence [4]. One of the main drivers of VR is the sense of presence defined by the sensation experienced by users, who are exposed to the computer-generating environment, of being there [8,9], along with the degree of immersion that is related to the technological system [10]

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