Contents

Experiment protocol

The experiment protocol for the controlled experiment.

Setup

EEG device

Primary device:

  • Muse S

Alternative devices (untested):

  • OpenBCI Cyton + Ultracortex

  • Neurosity Notion/Crown

ActivityWatch

(not for the controlled experiment)

Watchers:

  • Default watchers (aw-watcher-window and aw-watcher-afk)

  • aw-watcher-web to collect browser data

  • aw-watcher-input to collect detailed input data

    • Set the poll time to something low (0.2s?)

Protocol

The actual protocol to follow when performing the experiment.

Before

  • Inform about collected data and anonymization process (we won’t store names or other personally identifiable information)

  • Ask for informed consent

  • Take note of:

    • gender

    • device

    • age

    • handedness

    • software dev experience, specifically C/C++

  • Ask subject how they are feeling

    • Any standardized way?

    • States to ask about: tired, calm, focused, happy, sad

  • Ask subject if they’ve had caffeine today

During

  • (optional, if Muse) optionally have a dummy meditation session using the Muse app

  • Put on the EEG device

  • Start eegwatch

    • Set --duration to a high value to prevent recording restarting

    • Set --subject to the subject ID

  • Do a signal check

    • Use muselsl view -b Qt5Agg

    • Use eegwatch check

  • Run codeprose task

    • Ensure subject is correctly set

Extras:

  • Run arithmetic task

  • Other tasks

    • 10min Twitter or 10min YouTube?

    • 10min of working through email? (include input watcher)

    • 10min of programming? (include input watcher)

    • Have them read Wikipedia articles on different subjects (lets say something technical vs historical)

      • Has this been done before?

      • Should probably find a set of ~5 articles/sections in each category

After (debrief)

  • Ask subject how they are feeling again

    • If they answer the same, we’ll assume they’ve been feeling that way for the duration of the test

  • Ask briefly about their experience

    • Comfort

    • Difficulty of tasks

  • Collect data