Mihali Csikszentmihalyi on Flow

"Most of my work after 1978 has been based on a single concept: that of psychic energy, or attention."  So begins Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow and The Foundations of Positive Psychology".  After Brian suggested looking into states of flow during my presentation, the first place to look is of course at the work of he who pioneered looking at flow states and attention.

  Csikszentmihalyi created the Experience Sampling Method, or ESM, to study the details of everyday life and how a person feels throughout different points of the day depending on how engaged they are in their activities.  "The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) is a research procedure for studying what people do, feel and think during their daily lives.  It consists of asking people individuals to provide systematic self-reports at random occasions during the waking hours of a normal week." (p21, 2014)

  Later, he developed an interest in looking at states of play in adults, as it was under-studied yet revealed experiences which linked to overall happiness.  This led him to develop the concept of "flow".  Based on the idea that: "How attention is allocated determines the shape and content of one's life."(p3, 2014), flow looks at the state of mind which is a  "subjective state that people report when they are completely involved in something to the point of forgetting time, fatigue, and everything else but the activity itself.  It is what we feel when we read a well-crafter novel or play a good game of squash, or take part in a stimulating conversation.  The defining feature of flow is intense experiential involvement in moment-to-moment activity.  Attention is fully invested in the task at hand, and the person functions at his or her fullest capacity." (p230, 2014)

  Though his work, Csikszentmihalyi found that flow is intrinsically linked to happiness.  "It seems that every time people enjoy what they are doing, or in any way transcend ordinary states of existence, they report specific changes in attentional processes.  To be conscious of pleasurable experiences one must narrow the focus of attention exclusively on the stimuli involved. What we usually call concentration is this intensely focused attention on a narrow range of stimuli." (p7, 2014)  The state of attention a person is feeling is furthermore linked to this, as a state of focus on the task at hand affects how much enjoyment a person feels when performing the task. Through ESM, Csikszentmihalyi found that no matter the task, people reported higher levels of happiness when they were focusing on it.
"Optimal experiences occur when a person voluntarily focuses his attention on a limited stimulus field…In other words, the individual's choice determines the quality of experience." (p7, 2014)  Futhermore, "When a person is doing something, and focusing his attention on it, that person's mood is in general more positive than when he is thinking about something else…Workers report feeling significantly more creative, free, active, alert, and satisfied when they are thinking about what they are doing as opposed to thinking about something else..." (p10, 2014)

The link between the two can be demonstrated by the passage below:
"During flow…attentional resources are fully invested in the task at hand, so that objects beyond the immediate interaction generally fail to enter awareness." (p230, 2014)  The opposite effect is described by a subsequent quote on worrying. "Worrying about whether we can succeed at what we are doing -  on the job, in relationships, even crossing a busy street - is one of the major sources of psychic entropy in everyday life, and its reduction during flow is one of the reasons such an experience becomes enjoyable and thus rewarding." (p231, 2014)

Flow can be applied to my own research in relation to how it is employed while using technology.  What I found particularly relevant was the writings on flow to do with interaction and feedback, as this is applicable to app design.  Csikszentmihalyi writes: "Certain technologies become successful at least in part because they provide flow, thus motivating people to use them.  A good example is the Internet…" (p235, 2014)

"…flow is dependent on the presence of clear and immediate feedback.  The individual needs to negotiate the continually changing environmental demands that are part of all experiential involving activity (Reser and Scherl, 1988).  Immediate feedback serves this purpose: It informs the individual how well he or she is progressing with the activity, and dictates whether to adjust or maintain the present course of action.  It leaves the individual with little doubt in what to do next…To summarise, clear goals, optimal challenges and clear immediate feedback are all necessary features of activities that promote the intrinsically rewarding experiential involvement that characterises flow." (p232, 2014)

  Flow through feedback relates to stickiness, i.e how to keep the user using the app over a longer period of time, per use. "Individuals constantly evaluate their quality of experience and often will decide to continue or terminate a given behavioural sequence based on their evaluations...The phenomenology of flow further suggests that we may enjoy a particular activity because of something discovered though interaction." (p234, 2014)  In terms of happiness, flow though the use of technology stimulates emergent motivation, meaning that "we can come to experience a new or previously unengaging activity as intrinsically rewarding, if we find flow in it.  The motivation to persist in or return to the activity arises out of the experience itself. " (p234, 2014)

Csikszentmihalyi has another book about flow in education which I will write more about after reading.  

References

Flow and The Foundations of Positive Psychology: The Collected Works of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. 2014. [online] Available at:
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/747/bok%253A978-94-017-9088-8.pdf?auth66=1425377396_e9479d84332e5da6406726bcf90e3091&ext=.pdf
[Accessed 03 March 2015]