DESIGN FOR
FLOW
@kshitiz #uxindia13
Talk delivered at UX India Conference,
October 25th, 2013
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Currently I head :
INDIA STUDIO!
Otherwise I have a few startup initiatives
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Origin of this term?
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Marcus Arelius in his writings 'the Meditations’, wrote a lot about the
flow of thoughts and happiness and he concluded that "most things
flow naturally" and in his opinion it was better to "Go with the Flow"
than to try and change society.
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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Hungarian, Professor of psychology
Today we are going to speak about
FLOW
The psychology
of optimal
experience
His most famous work
Was done to study happiness in people
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People who learn to control inner experience will be able
to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as
any of us can come to being happy.
- M Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 1990
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Good UX à Happy people
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Design for people, emotions, behaviors.
Do not design for technology
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But its easier said than done…
So let us go a bit deeper into understanding this
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What actually goes on in the human mind,
when we are looking at designing for happiness
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Going from this
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To this
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Look into
a cognitive, psychological
&
behavioral understanding
of what builds a good UX
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Our mental and emotional states
M Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow, 1997
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These states are controlled by
CONSCIOUSNESS
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These states are controlled by
CONSCIOUSNESS
What is CONSCIOUSNESS ?
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CONSCIOUSNESS is a
Phenomenological construct
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It is dependent on phenomena :
Subjective experiences of the individual
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Order in the Consciousness à GOOD UX
Disorder in the Consciousness à BAD UX
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MASTERY OVER CONSCIOUSNESS à HAPPINESS
Mastery of the Consciousness à Happiness
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More than anything else, men and women seek happiness
- Socrates, 2300 years ago
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Optimal experience
depends upon ability
to control what
happens in the
consciousness each
moment
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How does Consciousness work?
How is it controlled?
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CONSCIOUSNESS :
Where pain and pleasure both reside
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Users actions are based on INSTINCT :
What we feel is right, the inner voice
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Information theory helps
in understanding what
really happens in the
consciousness
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What interests us, is how
sensory data (what we
experience through our
senses) are collected
processed, stored and
used
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Consciousness is a place for ordered
information à Responds to subjectively
experienced reality
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The consciousness processes
INFORMATION BITS
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COGNITIVE LOAD : Too much information
to process à Leads to CHAOS
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CHAOS creates DISCONTENT: facilitated
by chronic dissatisfaction and anxiety
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OVERCOMING the anxiety :
RECLAIMING the experience
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But not everything we are presented with, is
processed by the Consciousness
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The processing of information by the
Consciousness is INTENTION
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Our INTENTIONs decide the ATTENTION
spans and time we give to a task
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But there are limits of Consciousness :
How much information bits can the human
mind (central nervous system) process ?
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Shortest time it takes to
discriminate between one
set of information bit and
other is about 1/18th of a
second
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One can process upto 126
bits of information per
second
= 7560 bits per minute
= Almost half a million per hour
= 185 billion bits of information in a
lifetime *
* Assumption: Lifespan = 70years, and 16 hours or active waking time each days
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185 billion bits of information in a
lifetime !!!!
Seems a lot, but it is not!
To understand what the other person
is saying, 40 bits of information are
processed each second.
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Information is processed by the consciousness
because we give it ATTENTION
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ATTENTION is Psychic energy, that decides
what information bits need to be processed and
tells the consciousness what to do
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The more you complicate the information,
the more difficulty the consciousness has in
processing it!
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COMPLEXITY is a result of
differentiation and Integration
in Information.
Differentiation à
Move towards uniqueness
Integration à
Union of old vs new, other ideas,
preconceived impressions
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COMPLEXITY à Disorder in Consciousness
We call it PSYCHIC ENTROPY
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Removing Psychic Entropy in Consciousness,
is optimal experience and it leads to FLOW
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DESIGNING FOR FLOW = BETTER UX
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HOW ?
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No content
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Takeaway #1
Think about the Consciousness
when you design
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Takeaway #2
The goal is mastery of this
consciousness through design
decisions
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Takeaway #3
How can you control the users
intentions? Design for it.
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Takeaway #4
Think on how much attention
should be given to each task?
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Takeaway #5
Think about Information Bits that
the consciousness is processing
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Takeaway #6
Reduce cognitive load to remove
Chaos in consciousness
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Takeaway #7
Avoid Complexity and reduce
Psychic entropy