![](bg4.png)
The results have shown some interesting findings.
Girls gave a higher score to the game. Girls seem
to prefer to use computers for goal-oriented activities
with meaningful contexts (Kay, 2008). The game de-
veloped provided a goal with a meaningful context
(clean the dirty sea). This might have been the reason
why the girls scored higher the game. With regard to
the results about ease of use, we could see that both
groups considered touch-screen interaction easier and
more precise than tilt interaction. This is encouraging
because it shows that children could adapt to differ-
ent interaction types without major problems. With
regard to engagement and fun, the results revealed
that the children had similar enjoyment when play-
ing with tilt and touch-screen interaction. With regard
to the general preferences about the game, the analy-
ses showed that the children did not favour one inter-
action over the other. Subjects also stated that they
would like to use these interaction systems in other
games.
When comparing our study to other studies with
adult people, we can observe similar trends with re-
gard to the ease of use, where touch-screen interac-
tion was found easer and more precise (Schwarten
et al., 2008; van Tonder and Wesson, 2010). In con-
trast, there are differences with regard to the engage-
ment and fun. While, in our study, children consid-
ered equally fun playing with touch-screen or tilt in-
teraction, adults usually found funnier using tilt inter-
action (Schwarten et al., 2008; Cho et al., 2007). It
is important to note that in the studies of (Schwarten
et al., 2008) and (Cho et al., 2007) the tasks performed
were image manipulation and image navigation, re-
spectively. In our case, the task performed was to play
a game. Thus, it is possible that playing an engag-
ing task (like a game) made that the children found
the two interaction methods fun. A future study must
be conducted in order to see how the children would
rate the interaction types in an application that is not
a game.
With regard to future work, allowing them to cal-
ibrate the accelerometer when using tilt interaction
could enhance the experience. The game could also
be improved by adding different levels where obsta-
cles appear in the middle of the screen making the
experience more difficult. We could also add other
interaction methods to compare, like the use of but-
tons. In this study, using the device with or without
an external case was not tested. Thus, it would be in-
teresting to perform a comparison between using the
device with the external case and using it without the
external case, in order to observe whether or not the
external case actually helps the children move the de-
vice.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was funded by the Spanish APRENDRA
project (TIN2009-14319-C02). For their contribu-
tions, we would like to thank the following: the peo-
ple who helped in the development and validation; the
Summer School of the UPV; the children who partic-
ipated in this study; and the ETSInf for letting us use
its facilities during the testing phase.
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