Toward constructing an electroencephalogram measurement method for usability evaluation

Abstract

This paper describes our pilot study toward constructing an electroencephalogram (EEG) measurement method for usability evaluation. The measurement method consists of two steps: (1) measuring EEGs of subjects for several tens of seconds after events or tasks that are targets to evaluate, and (2) analyzing how much components of the alpha and/or beta rhythm are contained in the measured EEGs. However, there only exists an empirical rule on measurement time length of EEGs for usability evaluation. In this paper, we conduct an experiment to reveal the optimal time length of EEGs for usability evaluation by analyzing changes of EEGs over time. From the results of the experiments, we have found that the time length suitable for usability evaluation was more than 0~56.32 seconds. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.