Comparing the Effectiveness and Ergonomics of Smartphone-Based Gamepads

Even though smartphones offer a broad design space for being used as input devices for video games, their form factor makes them less ergonomic than physical gamepads. Previous research suggests that customizable controller layouts and added haptic feedback can improve the quality of smartphone-based gamepads. However, there are no rigorous user studies comparing different types of smartphone controllers to each other. In this paper, we present results of a user study in which we compared three different smartphone-based gamepads: a smartphone controller with a standard layout, a customizable smartphone controller, and a smartphone controller with a haptic case. Additionally, we included a physical gamepad as a reference in our study. Participants used the different controllers to play a racing game and complete pointing tasks. We found that the physical gamepad outperforms smartphone-based controllers in terms of efficiency, but there was no significant difference in effectiveness. Furthermore, our qualitative findings open up design considerations for future improvements of smartphone-based game controllers.