dessalles

Video game blog Joystiq describes Emotiv Systems’ fairly hapless product demo at this week’s Game Developers Conference. In theory, Emotiv’s EPOC Neuroheadset endows its wearer with the ability to control video games and on-screen interfaces with nothing more than “thought”. Unfortunately, theory wasn’t enough for their on-stage demonstrator:

Nam pressed Marco to “think of something, and make it happen” by manipulating a three-dimensional cube now occupying the center screen. A simple ‘zoom’ command seemingly worked, but when told to mind-push the cube along multiple axes, Marco failed. “Weak mind, weak mind,” teased Nam, warding off the inevitable tension. He filled the pause with pseudo-science, something about electrical impulses converted into an image of thought within a roughly 90,000-dimensional space. (90,000 dimensions? Had we heard that right?) Marco was still squeezing his eyes shut, carefully molding thoughts with his hands. Still nothing … and then … the cube spun briefly to life. (more…)

While spinning cubes with your mind is certainly neat; what’s more interesting (or worrisome) is what happens when brain-computer interaction breaks down. All of a sudden unusable or faulty interfaces aren’t a result of poor design but are instead the consequence of “weak minds”. Without an easily identifiable point of interaction to blame when things go wrong, the success or failure of these mediated interactions rests more squarely on the shoulders of users. The look of dejection on Marco’s face speaks for itself (not that I don’t in fact know if that is how Marco looks when he’s dejected). It’s not the product’s fault, it’s his fault. The same issues arise with voice-controlled menus - users frequently find themselves altering their speaking style when commands aren’t correctly interpreted. While poor speech recognition typically results in the adoption of a more mechanical inflection, I wonder if the EPOC will force more mechanical thought.

I dunno about all this. How could this thing offer help or guidance? If the EPOC assists its frustrated users by instructing them how to “think”, are they really controlling anything with their minds? Whatever, I’m pretty sure Emotiv is thinking (hah! get it?) in the wrong direction. Rather than worrying about how to get information out of the brain, they’d probably have better luck trying to get it into the brain.

Joystiq also describes Emotiv’s media portal - designed for use with the EPOC:

The guy who helped design Minority Report’s (imaginary) pre-crime interface joined Nam to show a preview of a prototype web portal using concepts based on Emotiv’s technology. Through gesturing and mood states, users can navigate a futuristic ‘media city,’ according to the videos. Still, did this beat a simple point and click?

That guy happens to be the CCO of Schematic, my employer; and the interface is classic Herigstad. Unfortunately, I agree with Joystiq’s sentiments. Similar to my feelings with respect to those wall-sized multi-touch screens, I’m fairly certain digital interfaces are better off amplifying human input - direct, one-to-one translation typically leads to nothing more than tired arms and tired minds.