I think there is a big advantage in having some engineering/hacking minded people being the users of medical devices like this arm prosthesis. I work in medical devices and I always think how good it would be to have test patients who have a deep understanding of our devices. I am sure progress could be accelerated a lot if you had patients who can give better feedback. I know it’s not FDA approved but if I had device myself I certainly would play with the programming. Obviously the level of experimentation depends on the device. If a malfunction can do serious harm you probably don’t want to experiment much. But there are a lot of devices that won’t kill you if something goes wrong.
real user feedback? do you live in la-la land or something? We're going to need an outside agency, a giant game of telephone, and a bunch of contrived questionnaires to spend that kind of money.