PLUME: Record, Replay, Analyze and Share User Behavior in 6DoF XR Experiences

From education to medicine to entertainment, a wide range of industrial and academic fields now utilize eXtended Reality (XR) technologies. This diversity and growing use are boosting research and leading to an increasing number of XR experiments involving human subjects. The main aim of these studies is to understand the user experience in the broadest sense, such as the user cognitive and emotional states. Behavioral data collected during XR experiments, such as user movements, gaze, actions, and physiological signals constitute precious assets for analyzing and understanding the user experience. While they contribute to overcome the intrinsic flaws of explicit data such as post-experiment questionnaires, the required acquisition and analysis tools are costly and challenging to develop, especially for 6DoF (Degrees of Freedom) XR experiments. Moreover, there is no common format for XR behavioral data, which restrains data-sharing, and thus hinders wide usages across the community, replicability of studies, and the constitution of large datasets or meta-analysis. In this context, we present PLUME, an open-source software toolbox (PLUME Recorder, PLUME Viewer, PLUME Python) that allows for the exhaustive record of XR behavioral data (including synchronous physiological signals), their offline interactive replay and analysis (with a standalone application), and their easy sharing due to our compact and interoperable data format. We believe that PLUME can greatly benefit the scientific community by making the use of behavioral and physiological data available for the greatest, contributing to the reproducibility and replicability of XR user studies, enabling the creation of large datasets, and contributing to a deeper understanding of user experience.