Measuring Immersion and Affect in a Brain-Computer Interface Game

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have widely been used in medical applications, to facilitate making selections. However, whether they are suitable for recreational applications is unclear as they have rarely been evaluated for user experience. As the scope of the BCI applications is expanding from medical to recreational use, the expectations of BCIs are also changing. Although the performance of BCIs is still important, finding suitable BCI modalities and investigating their influence on user experience demand more and more attention. In this study a BCI selection method and a comparable nonBCI selection method were integrated into a computer game to evaluate user experience in terms of immersion and affect. An experiment with seventeen participants showed that the BCI selection method was more immersive and positively affective than the non-BCI selection method. Participants also seemed to be more indulgent towards the BCI selection method.