My calibration feedback came from a 9 year old

I was demoing my EEG headset at a school fair in Austin last month. The kids were lining up to try the Pong game where you move the paddle with your brain. One little girl kept losing and said, "your game is boring, it feels like I'm thinking too slow." That stung, but she had a point. I went back and cut my signal smoothing window from 400ms to 150ms, and the responsiveness felt totally different. Has anyone else gotten useful criticism from a non-expert that made you rethink your setup?

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knight.diana18d ago

Hmm, that kid’s feedback was pretty blunt but I don’t think cutting your smoothing window was the real fix here. Moving from 400 to 150ms makes the paddle jumpy and noisy, kids just feel that differently than adults do. They might have found it “slow” because they were expecting more instant magic, not because your original setup was actually bad. Most people who try these demos don’t know how much brain signal noise exists, so they blame themselves when it doesn’t feel like telekinesis. You probably traded smoothness for a twitchy control that will confuse older users too. Kids say stuff like that all the time, sometimes it’s worth ignoring and just letting them have fun.