A Personalized and Adaptable User Interface for a Speech and Cursor Brain-Computer Interface

Communication and computer interaction are important for autonomy in modern life. Unfortunately, these capabilities can be limited or inaccessible for the millions of people living with paralysis. While implantable brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) show promise for restoring these capabilities, little has been explored on designing BCI user interfaces (UIs) for sustained daily use. Here, we present a personalized UI for an intracortical BCI system that enables users with severe paralysis to communicate and interact with their computers independently. Through a 22-month longitudinal deployment with one participant, we used iterative co-design to develop a system for everyday at-home use and documented how it evolved to meet changing needs. We then adapted the same framework to a second participant with different BCI control methods, demonstrating the interface’s adaptability across users. Our findings highlight how personalization and adaptability enabled independence in daily life and provide design implications for developing future BCI assistive technologies.