An evaluation of the impact of multimodal feedback on interaction performance and experience in mobile gaming

Abstract

Recent years have seen a rapid expansion of the market for mobile devices. This expansion has opened a new ground for video games creators, allowing them to reach millions of people every day. Along with new possibilities, new challenges arise: modern devices are very powerful, but also quite restricted in the way we can interact with them. This poses a series of problems for the content creators, that have to deal with the limited input/output resources of these platforms. In this work we analyse two ways of interaction that are most common in the current mobile gaming landscape: tilt interaction and touch interaction. We run experiments where users have to play three games, with and without multimodal feedback, and then answer a self evaluation questionnaire. We examine the data to look for effects on their perceived and actual performance. We find out that multimodal feedback is beneficial for these interactions and allows to improve performances concretely, as well as enrich the overall user experience.