Rapid increases in the smartphone gaming industry have made in-game usability increasingly important. However, industrial usability is still focused on performance although high performance is not necessarily a goal in actual games. Mobile gamers largely want to increase their hedonic satisfaction. So already established usability guidelines can fail in mobile gaming. Focusing on vibrations as a haptic feedback, this study analyzed the influences of intensity and length of vibrations on user perceptions based on the technology acceptance model aiming for hedonic satisfaction when mobile gaming. A smartphone game was modified to generate seven types of vibrations for a human factors experiment with 70 subjects and administered a questionnaire to measure their perceptions of the game influenced by the vibrations.The results show that including vibrations significantly increases the perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and cognitive concentration in the game. The stronger vibration intensity significantly improves user perceptions of the usefulness and cognitive concentration, whereas the length of vibration is not a critical factor as long as vibrations exist.

Objective: This study investigates the influences of vibrations on hedonic satisfaction based on four kinds of perceptions (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, cognitive concentration) when mobile gaming. Background: As mobile gaming is becoming more and more popular for smartphone users, they might want to have more hedonic satisfaction instead of focusing on traditional usability criteria such as efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Method: We conducted a human-factors experiment with 35 male subjects to evaluate hedonic satisfaction in the mobile game configured by 7 vibration types having different levels of intensity and length. Results: The results revealed that the use of vibration significantly increases the perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and cognitive concentration. In addition, the intensity of vibration makes differences of perceived usefulness and cognitive concentration. Conclusion: Vibration can be effectively used to improve hedonic satisfaction of smartphone users in mobile gaming when they are not allowed to turn the sound effects on. Application: This study helps game designers effectively provide vibration feedback of mobile games for smartphone users.