Keep your eyes on the road and your finger on the trigger - Designing for mixed focus of attention in a mobile game for brief encounters

Abstract

In this paper we present an initial user feedback study of the Road Rager prototype. Road Ruger is a mixed reality game, designed to enable passengers in different cars to piny against each other during an encounter in traffic. We are concerned with how to design a game which balances the player's focus of attention between traffic and the computer interfaces, to provide a game which is comprehensive, interesting and challenging during a very limited lifetime. The study shows that a tangible user interface enables the player to handle the interaction in the game while watching for cars in the vicinity. Further, the users found multiplayer gaming during brief encounters exciting. However, the study also showed that minimalism is critical to the design. The gestures should preferably be indexical rather than symbolic, and elaborate forms of identification as a condition for manipulative success should be avoided. Finally, tangible user interfaces also allow a type of gaming where players only focus on the computers' interface, which suppresses the experience of combining traffic interaction with computer interaction. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.