User Experience Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for user experience researchers and experts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I'm looking for some statistics about how people use their tablets when they play a game. We're talking about complicated one with multiple interactions like strategic style.
Do they hold the device in both hand and use thumbs (even if you have to reach the middle of the screen) ? Do they place it on a table/knees and use fingers ? etc...
I've strated to read some research (google, institutes and so on) but nothing conclusive about this specific case. Can you help me ?
I haven’t seen any stats on the issue but I have a suggestion that might help narrow things down to allow you to conduct testing:
Start by aggregating controls into logical entities and prioritise them inline of how you think the game should be played.
Test and refine to distil which controls will be most used and bring them closer user action points:
Another thing to think about is when to use a thumb-sized target over an index finger-sized one. It’s difficult to know whether most of your users will use their thumbs or index fingers on your application. However, if your application is a game, it’s likely most users will use their thumbs to play instead of their index fingers. This is why thumb-sized targets are particularly useful for gaming applications.
source: Finger-Friendly Design
The above clearly suggests that game applications need to optimise their design for thumbs rather than indexes. The rationale being that the use of a smaller hit/touch area (index) requires more accuracy and is associated with more effort, while catering for larger hit/touch area (thumbs) requires less effort from the player.
In line with above, touch surface dedicated to game controls "especially for most frequently used ones" need to align with average width of the index finger and thumb and game controls laid-out accordingly.
An MIT Touch Lab study of Human Fingertips to investigate the Mechanics of Tactile Sense found that the average width of the index finger is 1.6 to 2 cm (16 – 20 mm) for most adults. This converts to 45 – 57 pixels, which is wider than what most mobile guidelines suggest.
source: Finger-Friendly Design
The best user experience should be tested by potential users.
If you find that the best experience is to play the game with the tablet on a table, then you should inform your users of this at the start of the game. It would be nice to still offer the ability to switch the controls and maybe warn the user again that for the best experience, switch to tabletop mode or whatever.
I don't know of any research I can point you to but personally, I prefer to have flexibility with regards to how I use/engage the technology while understanding the consequences of my decisions.
