Usability of three software platforms for modifying graphical layout in visual P300-based brain-computer interface

Abstract

Individuals afflicted by neurodegenerative conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may eventually reach a point where they lose the ability to communicate with the outside world through conventional muscular pathways. In these cases, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can be a suitable alternative, as they directly transform brain activity into external commands. A P300-based speller is a BCI for communication purposes. The most popular software platforms used to develop spellers are BCI2000 and Open-ViBE. However, these platforms can be relatively complex to set up without advanced technical knowledge. For this reason, the UMA-BCI Speller platform was recently developed, intended to facilitate the control of the system. Hence, the objective of this research was to assess and compare the user-friendliness of the three platforms put forth. A group of fifteen participants were tasked with configuring a designated speller layout using the three platforms. The findings acquired demonstrated that the UMA-BCI Speller platform exhibited the utmost level of usability, as it required the shortest time to complete the tasks and received the best feedback in the questionnaires. Overall, there was no difference between the BCI2000 and Open-ViBE platforms. In short, the UMA-BCI Speller offered the best usability and showed itself to be an easy application to use that provides many options to configure a speller graphical layout.