Enhancing Universal Access – EEG based Learnability Assessment In: Universal Access to Applications and Services

This paper presents initial research on a new learnability assessment methodology. We propose the use of electroencephalography (EEG) to further improve usability testing. We discovered whether and to what extend there is a correlation between brainwave patterns and the learnability of the software used. Our central hypothesis is that learnability can be assessed by analyzing the rise and fall of specific frequency bands in electroencephalographic recordings. In order to collect empirical evidence for our hypothesis, we conducted an experiment with N=32 participants. We developed a test environment comprising a low-cost EEG system and developed software for analysis and testing. Based on our findings, we consider our EEG-based learnability test applicable, either as a pre-test – in order to determine whether further testing is necessary – or as an augmenting method during standard usability testing. The users’emotions, registered on the EEG, can be applied as a baseline for detecting possible usabilitydifficulties and employed in the development of a biological rapid-usability method for accessibility assessment.