Bendy: Exploring Mobile Gaming with Flexible Devices

Abstract

We explore the use of bend gestures in gaming with flexible devices and investigate the size differences between smartphones and tablets. We conducted a study asking users to select bend gestures for nine tasks derived from gaming, grouped by navigation, action, and deformation. Our results suggest pairing opposing tasks, such as navigating left and right, by gesture location. We saw low consensus for action tasks, and strong association between the location of the gestures and the location of the visual, relating to the Simon Effect. We suggest guidelines for the design of game controls for flexible devices. We implemented the proposed gestures into six games using an interactive flexible prototype in our second study. Our results are similar between sizes, yet with an overall user preference for the smaller prototype. We observed that hand positioning is an important usability issue to consider when designing flexible devices.