The identity of the protagonist in brain-computer interfaces: A user-centered design approach

摘要

The Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) community is slowly moving towards users' involvement at the development phases of their research. However, dimensions regarding end-user approach and interaction design are still overlooked in the community. In this paper we are proposing a way to look deeper in to the user for extracting the aspects from the context that could be vital for an efficient design. A total of 211 students of a higher education institution in Mexico were asked information about their social and technological context, activities and preferences on concepts related to BCIs. Departing from the given information, we sketched a virtual environment which could be used to replace classic interaction paradigms in order to appeal to a better contextualization of the task required for motor imagery (MI) control. Later, the approach was validated with opinions of 62 students. Results point towards a favorable reception of the VE approach in contrast to the classic arrow paradigm. It is noticed that skepticism towards BCI technology was noticeably present in the results of surveys which were applied at early stages.