LUIDA: Large-scale Unified Infrastructure for Digital Assessments based on commercial metaverse platform

Abstract

Introduction Online experiments using metaverse platforms have gained significant traction in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Virtual Reality (VR) research. However, current research workflows are highly fragmented, as researchers must use separate tools for system implementation, participant recruitment, experiment execution, and data collection, reducing consistency and increasing workload. Moreover, the lack of a structured methodology for these metaverse-based approaches forces researchers to either acquire specialized expertise needed for each different platform, or resort to inefficient, manual methods for their experiments. We present LUIDA (Large-scale Unified Infrastructure for Digital Assessments), a metaverse-based framework that integrates these fragmented processes. Methods LUIDA automatically allocates interconnected virtual environments for parallel experiment execution and provides implementation templates adaptable to various VR research domains, requiring minimal metaverse development expertise. Our evaluation included two studies using a prototype built on Cluster, the commercial metaverse platform. First, VR researchers used LUIDA to develop and run experiments. Second, we conducted three replicated experiments with public Cluster users, each recruiting approximately 200 participants within 1 week. Results The VR researchers reported good usability (SUS: 73.75) and moderate workload (NASA-TLX: 24.11) for overall usage, while the lower-level experiment-authoring template scored lower on usability and remains a target for improvement; interviews confirmed streamlined workflows compared to traditional laboratory experiments. The replicated experiments largely reproduced the original findings. Discussion These results support LUIDA’s experimental validity while also revealing where large-scale reproduction diverges from laboratory results. LUIDA has been released publicly and is undergoing technical refinements, eventually providing a unified and structured protocol to improve research efficiency and experimental reproducibility in VR studies.