Mobile games in the in-between moments of the day

Denzil Ferreira and colleagues logged the phone use of 21 people for three weeks and then followed 15 of them more closely with short questionnaires sent at the moment of use. About 40% of app launches lasted less than 15 seconds. They called these brief bursts micro-usage, and found they happened most often at home and alone, not only on the move.

Barry Brown, Moira McGregor and Eric Laurier took a different approach, recording iPhone screens alongside wearable-camera video of what was happening around the user. Their conclusion pushes against the image of the phone as an escape hatch from the world: phone use was threaded through whatever else people were doing, paused and resumed as conversations, journeys and errands demanded. The gap is not a clean bubble. It is shared with the world around you.

Stephan Engl and Lennart Nacke drew similar lessons for games. Their model of mobile player experience puts context at the centre: where you are, how much time you have, who is around and what state you are in all shape the experience as much as the game itself. A game that is lovely on the sofa can be miserable on a crowded bus.

Sources1Source 1Ferreira, D., Goncalves, J., Kostakos, V., Barkhuus, L., & Dey, A. K. (2014). Contextual experience sampling of mobile application micro-usage. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services (pp. 91–100). ACM.2Source 2Brown, B., McGregor, M., & Laurier, E. (2013). iPhone in vivo: Video analysis of mobile device use. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1031–1040). ACM.3Source 3Engl, S., & Nacke, L. E. (2013). Contextual influences on mobile player experience – A game user experience model. Entertainment Computing, 4(1), 83–91.

Alexis Hiniker and colleagues distinguished two kinds of phone use. Instrumental use is purposeful: look up a timetable, reply to a message. Ritualistic use is habitual and diversionary: pass the time, see what is there. Logging 43 people for two weeks, they found they could tell the two apart from usage patterns alone with reasonable accuracy, which says something about how different they look in practice.

Ritualistic use is not bad in itself. Filling a wait with something pleasant is one of the oldest uses of a pastime. The risk is drift. Antti Oulasvirta and colleagues described checking habits: very brief, repeated glances at quickly available content, which then sometimes spur longer use. The gap that began as five minutes at a bus stop becomes twenty minutes of scrolling once you are home.

The difference between a pleasant filler and a drifting habit is often whether the activity has an ending. We cover the broader question in how games become habits; here the practical point is that the in-between moment needs a game that knows when it is done.

Sources4Source 4Hiniker, A., Patel, S. N., Kohno, T., & Kientz, J. A. (2016). Why would you do that? Predicting the uses and gratifications behind smartphone-usage behaviors. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 634–645). ACM.5Source 5Oulasvirta, A., Rattenbury, T., Ma, L., & Raita, E. (2012). Habits make smartphone use more pervasive. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 16(1), 105–114.

The in-between moments of a day are rarely private. There is a stranger in the next seat, a child tugging at a sleeve, a receptionist who might call your name at any second. Engl and Nacke list social context alongside place and time as one of the forces that shape mobile play, and Brown and colleagues saw phone use constantly adjusting to the people around it.

That has practical consequences. A game that needs sound is awkward on a quiet train. A game that flashes and shakes draws glances. A game that demands both thumbs and full attention is hard to play while holding a bag or keeping half an eye on a toddler. And a game that punishes you for looking away is fighting the very situation it is played in.

The best in-between games are, in a sense, polite. They are quiet by default, readable with one hand, and patient when the world needs you for a moment. They also leave room for the social side of waiting: a game you can glance up from to answer a question, or tilt towards the person beside you who wants to see what you are doing.

Sources3Source 3Engl, S., & Nacke, L. E. (2013). Contextual influences on mobile player experience – A game user experience model. Entertainment Computing, 4(1), 83–91.2Source 2Brown, B., McGregor, M., & Laurier, E. (2013). iPhone in vivo: Video analysis of mobile device use. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1031–1040). ACM.

Put the research together and a checklist emerges. None of it is exotic; it is simply what the in-between moment asks for.

• It starts fast: one tap from the icon to something playable.
• You can read the state at a glance when you look back after an interruption.
• There is no clock, so being interrupted never costs you a round.
• A round is short and ends clearly, so you know when to put the phone away.
• It works offline, because waiting rooms and underground platforms often have poor signal.
• Nothing plays or pops up on its own while your attention is elsewhere.

Sources3Source 3Engl, S., & Nacke, L. E. (2013). Contextual influences on mobile player experience – A game user experience model. Entertainment Computing, 4(1), 83–91.1Source 1Ferreira, D., Goncalves, J., Kostakos, V., Barkhuus, L., & Dey, A. K. (2014). Contextual experience sampling of mobile application micro-usage. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services (pp. 91–100). ACM.

We built OutBrick for exactly these moments, and the research above is a fair test of it. A board takes a couple of minutes. There is a move limit and a target, never a clock, so if your name is called you can lock the phone and come back to the board where you left it. The first undo on every board is free, which makes a hurried move recoverable. It plays offline. Adverts are only opt-in rewarded videos, so nothing starts playing while you are looking at the departures board.

Our earlier piece on the commuter puzzle goes into the design of a two-minute session. If you want to try one in a spare moment right now, the daily board runs in your browser.

The in-between moments of a day are small, but there are a lot of them, and how they are spent adds up. Ten minutes of waiting, a few times a day, is several hours a week. Nobody needs to optimise that time, but it is worth noticing whether it leaves you feeling rested, entertained or merely scattered. A few habits help keep it pleasant rather than drifting.

Decide the unit before you start: one board, one puzzle, one round. Let the end of the wait be the end of the game. And sometimes leave the phone in your pocket. Looking around a waiting room or out of a train window is its own kind of rest, and our guide on when to play and when to put the phone down is a good companion to this one.

Sources5Source 5Oulasvirta, A., Rattenbury, T., Ma, L., & Raita, E. (2012). Habits make smartphone use more pervasive. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 16(1), 105–114.4Source 4Hiniker, A., Patel, S. N., Kohno, T., & Kientz, J. A. (2016). Why would you do that? Predicting the uses and gratifications behind smartphone-usage behaviors. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (pp. 634–645). ACM.