Designing Mobile EEG Neurofeedback Games for Children with Autism: Implications from Industry Practice

TL;DR

This paper shares industry-based insights from developing mobile EEG neurofeedback games for preschool children with autism, highlighting design considerations to improve playability and user experience based on a year-long collaborative effort.

Contribution

It provides practical design implications for neurofeedback games tailored to autistic children, derived from industry practice and stakeholder collaboration.

Findings

Design of game characters and narratives impacts engagement.

Gameplay elements can enhance neurofeedback effectiveness.

Stakeholder feedback guides better game development.

Abstract

Neurofeedback games are an effective and playful approach to enhance certain social and attentional capabilities in children with autism, which are promising to become widely accessible along with the commercialization of mobile EEG modules. However, little industry-based experiences are shared, regarding how to better design neurofeedback games to fine-tune their playability and user experiences for autistic children. In this paper, we review the experiences we gained from industry practice, in which a series of mobile EEG neurofeedback games have been developed for preschool autistic children. We briefly describe our design and development in a one-year collaboration with a special education center involving a group of stakeholders: children with autism and their caregivers and parents. We then summarize four concrete implications we learnt concerning the design of game characters, game narratives, as well as gameplay elements, which aim to support future work in creating better neurofeedback games for preschool children with autism.