# AIT Brain Lab — research decision note

Working document for discussion, not an official AIT assessment form.
Use only the parts relevant to your stage. Unknowns are welcome.

Project / student / degree / date:

## 1. Question and value
What specific question are we trying to answer?
Who could use the answer, and what would they do differently?
What do we expect to learn even if the proposed method does not help?

## 2. Closest work
| Verified paper / link | Question and evidence | What it leaves unanswered | Consequential difference from our work |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |

Search terms / nearby fields checked / search date:
Uncertainty about the gap:

## 3. Next test
Our explanation:
Strongest competing explanation:
Smallest test that can distinguish them:
Comparison and what must stay the same:
Outcome measure and what it actually measures:
Result that would weaken our explanation:
Access / time / compute or participant budget:
When to review, narrow, change method, or stop this test:
For exploratory/design work: use the next observation or prototype comparison;
do not invent a causal hypothesis if the purpose is understanding a situation.

## 4. Claim and evidence
| Intended claim | Evidence available (file / figure / version) | Missing evidence or limitation | Next decision |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| | | | |

Separate software checks, development cases, held-out evaluation, and human evidence.
Keep failures and changes to the plan. Mark exploratory analyses as exploratory.

## 5. Meeting note
What changed since our last discussion:
Evidence and my interpretation:
Bottleneck and what I tried:
My proposed next step and why:
Alternative option:
Decision / support needed:
Agreed student action:
Agreed supervisor / team support:
Next review: