User experience and long-term adherence

Whether a person will actually keep using a BCI in daily life, which depends far less on peak decoding accuracy than researchers tend to assume and far more on comfort, setup time, appearance, cognitive effort, and reliability. Assistive technology has a long history of abandonment: devices that work in a clinic are set aside at home when they take twenty minutes to don, feel conspicuous, tire the user, or fail unpredictably. A BCI competes not with nothing but with whatever the person already does, and it must be better on the whole experience, not just on a benchmark.

This reframes the design target. A slightly less accurate interface that is invisible, dons in seconds, and never demands recalibration may deliver more real value over a year than a more accurate one that is exhausting to use. User-centred and participatory design — involving the intended users, often people with severe disability, from the start — and outcome measures that track sustained use, workload, and quality of life rather than classification accuracy alone, are how the field closes the gap between an impressive demonstration and a tool someone lives with.