Claria, produced by Theia Interactive, has been unveiled as a new suite of bioanalytic software tools designed to analyse a person’s physical responses while in VR.
Claria was created specifically for HP’s new Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition VR headset, to determine how a person thinks about a given experience, helping creators and companies zero in on the exact design qualities that will make it stand out.
Using the biosensors within the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition VR headset, Claria can record and track six key markers – heart rate, heart rate variability, cognitive load, eye vector, pupillometry and saccade (the rapid movement of the eye between fixation points).
Using this information, architects and designers can determine which builds command attention, while marketers can tell which locations and features within a VR project attract a person’s gaze.
Designers can judge the intuitiveness of their creations and understand what users expect or test multiple designs and go with the one that generates the best reaction. The possibilities are endless.
“It’s easy to look at something and know if you like it or not, but defining exactly what isn’t working can be much trickier,” said Theia Interactive president Bill Fishkin.
“With Claria, we can determine how you feel about a design before you can even put it into words.”
Theia explains that the biometric results recorded by Claria can be configured to provide the user with easy-to-understand results – including heat maps, graphs and videos – or huge amounts of raw data to help better understand what users feel about what they saw.
Claria is also designed to work natively with Theia’s Optim software, a suite of tools within Unreal Engine, including VR projects.
With Optim, Claria can extend its bioanalytical tools to Theia’s multi-user collaborative template, simultaneously bringing multiple people together inside a VR project within Unreal. Users and creators can meet in a virtual space and make changes to VR designs based on the reactions of users.
Claria will be released in conjunction with the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition VR headset in early 2021.
