A user centred approach for developing Brain-Computer Interfaces

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) research requires a multi-disciplinary approach. The core concept harnesses brain wave activity to enable a user to interact with devices without the need for physical activity. There are many possible benefactors of such technology, including rehabilitation, supporting disabled people in everyday activities and the gaming industry. This is a science that has been in the embryonic stage for some years and there has been a recent push to develop the technology for application outside of the laboratory environment. This paper gives details of developments within the European Union (EU) funded BRAIN project whereby the goal is to achieve an easily used BCI system for operation in a domestic environment. More importantly, as much of the BCI community´s research to date has been in the advancement of the scientific signal processing and paradigm development there has been less attention to the user aspects of the BCI system. In contrary a user-centred model of development is employed in this project.