Initial Exploration of the Use of Specific Tangible Widgets for Tablet Games

In this paper we investigated the use of tangible widgets vs. the use of finger touch for tablet games, which to our knowledge has not been researched so far. A user test was conducted where participants would report which of the two interaction methods they preferred for playing two tablet games: a fast-paced and a slow-paced game. We conclude that some of the participants found tangible widgets to be an interesting and potentially entertaining interaction method, even though our implementation had technical shortcomings compared to finger touch. Further study is needed to investigate how to fix these shortcomings, and how to increase the game experience of tablet games using tangible widgets.