It is as a guinea pig that we explored the immersive course infinity last fall, in the great hall of Arsenal, in Montreal. The Tech3Lab team, a laboratory associated with HEC, dissected our reactions during our virtual tour of the International Space Station by diving into the heart of the most ambitious creation to date for Studios Felix & Paul and Studio Phi.
Posted yesterday at 12:00 p.m.
We obtained the preliminary results of the study only a few days before the departure of the creators of infinity for Texas. The Montreal team is in the running for the prize for the best virtual reality experience at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Innovation Awards, which will be presented on Monday. The Oscars of technology, in a way.
Knowing the reactions of users is therefore one more tool for the geniuses behind Infinity Experiences, a joint entity created by Studio Phi and Studios Felix & Paul in the wake of the launch of the exhibition. infinity. Thanks to an electrocardiogram integrated into a Hexoskin jacket, electrodermal sensors glued to the hands and a camera attached to the chest of 30 volunteers, including the author of these lines, Tech3Lab researchers were able to analyze their behavior.
PHOTO PHILIPPE BOIVIN, THE PRESS
The Tech3Lab team collected its data from the volunteers using an electrocardiogram integrated into a Hexoskin jacket, electrodermal sensors glued to the hands and a camera attached to the chest.
“I’ve always wanted to create a bridge between science and the concrete, so to combine science, innovation and art is really exceptional for me,” explains master’s student Shady Guertin-Lahoud, the founder of this research project at Tech3Lab. We see how much science can guide art, it’s really beautiful. »
IMAGE PROVIDED BY TECH3LAB
The map of the emotional and exploratory journey of our journalist in the virtual universe of the interactive exhibition infinity. The dots represent the video capsules watched: the larger they are, the more movement observed; the more they tend towards the red, the greater the emotional investment.
Shady and the team at Tech3Lab – the largest user experience research lab in North America – have thus created a map of the space station where each video projected in users’ helmets is represented by a pellet – larger when it is there is more movement and interaction, and more and more red according to the importance of the visitor’s emotional investment.
PHOTO DOMINICK GRAVEL, THE PRESS
Pierre-Majorique Léger, co-director of Tech3Lab
“For designers, this data is the keystone to understanding people’s behavior,” says Pierre-Majorique Léger, holder of the NSERC-Prompt Industrial Research Chair in User Experience and co-director of Tech3Lab. If you stay straight in front of a video, there’s no point in spending so much on developing a three-dimensional environment. Knowing how the person will engage helps guide designers so they can make more informed decisions. »
The creation of virtual reality environments is a new profession, it must be understood and discovered. We want to be able to nurture this new professional discipline.
Pierre-Majorique Léger, co-director of Tech3Lab
Amazing discoveries
Of the 45 immersive videos viewed by viewers, the one that elicited the most emotional activity from viewers amazed the designers. “It’s a video in which we see two astronauts doing a scientific experiment while talking to each other in a very normal way. There is no emotional content in what they say, but it is nevertheless the scene which obtained the highest score, that surprised me”, recognizes Félix Lajeunesse, co-founder and creative director of Studios Felix & Paul.
“However, we notice that one of the astronauts comes very close to the camera, this simple progression towards the lens gives a physical character to the scene. In my classification, I had placed this scene in the science category, I did not believe that it would have such a strong emotional charge. It changes my reading of the show. »
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Stéphane Rituit, CEO and co-founder of Studios Felix & Paul, Félix Lajeunesse, co-founder of Studios Felix & Paul and creator of the experience infinityand Éric Albert, CEO of Studios Phi
Overall, however, the creative team had hit the mark in several places, especially in the last segment where the visitor finds himself alone, seated, contemplating the Earth through a porthole of the International Space Station. Here, our own heart rate slowed considerably, witnessing our state of extreme relaxation.
“This eight-minute film, without any narration, aimed to create a space for the viewer to experience something without being guided, without communicating data,” explains Félix Lajeunesse. This moment which belongs to the spectator, it is designed like that. Your meditative reaction comes from that, especially since the fact of being inclined, almost lying down, calls for physical abandonment. »
“But in the end, these data allow us to put concrete things on things that are very intuitive, it gives us a language to better name what we do, these are points of reference for the future”, concludes the young Creator.
infinity will return to Montreal
After leaving Montreal on November 7, the experience infinity moved to Houston, after which it will set sail for Seattle. But since the new version of the interactive exhibit includes never-before-seen footage of an astronauts’ spacewalk, infinity will also return to Quebec, confirms Éric Albert, CEO of Phi Studios. We are also thinking of improving the experience of people who have already walked the virtual corridors of the International Space Station (ISS): “As we have a lot of people who come back two or three times, we considered offering tickets for season, says Stéphane Rituit, CEO and co-founder of Studios Felix & Paul. But we could also take into account the experience already lived to enrich their second visit, in particular by suggesting to them choices of videos that they have not watched. »
Not to mention that people could soon visit infinity in the comfort of their homes. “With the time allotted to explore, customers cannot see all the content,” recognizes Félix Lajeunesse. We therefore find interesting the idea of possibly having new access points at home to be able to return to this universe. And if it’s not in the ISS, it could be elsewhere, because Infinity Experiences won’t stop there: space, we will continue to do that, confirms Félix Lajeunesse. Whether it’s the exploration of deep space, the Moon or Mars, it’s a natural continuity for us. »
Learn more
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- 70%
- Proportion of visitors to Houston whose infinity was the first virtual reality experience
SOURCE: PHI Studios
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- 85%
- Proportion of visitors who would not hesitate to recommend their loved ones to take part in the experience infinity. “In the jargon, we speak of the net promoter score, and a score above 80% is extremely rare. »
SOURCE: Éric Albert, CEO of phi studios