TED Talk on Flow

Having read a lot of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi I felt it would be a good idea to watch his TED Talk and write up some notes on here, to get a background on the concept and help my own understanding of it.  After all, what better way to get an explanation of the concept of flow from the man who came up with it?

I found the story behind how he got into the field of psotiive psychology interesting as it was a reaction to the chaos and emotional toll the second world war had taken on the people  Csikszentmihalyi grew up around as a child during wartime. "I realised how few of the grown-ups I knew were able to withstand the tragedies that the world visited on them...how few of them could even resemble a normal, contented, satisfied, happy life once their job, their home, their security was destroyed by the war." (Csikszentmihalyi, 2004)

Csikszentmihalyi Credits Carl Jung for getting him into psychology after attending a free lecture he gave in Zurich, on how the psyche of Europeans had been impacted during the war - relating to his own experiences.  After moving to America to study psychology and eventually becoming a professor, Csikszentmihalyi began to try to understand what the "root" of happiness is.  Notably from studies on happiness vs income/materials showed that there was no increase in happiness as the amount of money earned or number of possessions owned grew higher, so he wanted to know "Where in everyday life, in our normal experience, do we feel really happy?" (Csikszentmihalyi, 2004)

His work started off by looking at creatives such as artists and scientists, as the aspect of being deeply involved in a task was soon picked up on as a major factor in positive moods. Says Csikszentmihalyi, "I tried to understand why they did work that made their life meaningful and didn't feel like work." (2004) In the presentation examples were used of composers, poets and artists, among others, who reported a kind of suspension of being when they became so focused on the task at hand that they forgot they were hungry, needed to go to the bathroom and other sensations related to bodily awareness because of the high level of absorption in the activity. On one example, Csikszentmihalyi (2004) described the experience as such: "When you are involved in this, completely engaging process of creating something new, he doesn't have enough attention left to monitor how his body feels or his problems at home…his identity disappears from his conscious, as he doesn't have enough attention…"

After interviewing many people for various projects - some relating to flow, some not - so many people described the experience of being so involved with their task as a "spontaneous flow" that Csikszentmihalyi named the experience accordingly.  The 7 conditions of flow were identified through ESM testing and interviews (as outlined in this dodgy screen shot).

Components of Flow

Conditions of flow

Challenge vs skills in each experience - when challenge is higher than average and skill is higher than average.  "That flow channel will be when you are doing what you really like to do." At the point of this TED Talk, Csikszentmihalyi's mission was to figure out how to put more and more flow states into the everyday channel.  We know of course that this has since developed!

References 

Csikszentmihalyi, M.  2004.  Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness [online video]
Avaliable at:  http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en#t-937633
[Accessed 04 March 2015]

Images are screen shots from the above

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]

Superviser meeting Week 8 notes

Today I met with Simone for our weekly meeting, where I showed her my draft dissertation plan and we briefly discussed the topic of flow and the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.   I am in the process of writing a blog post on flow based on some of Csikszentmihalyi's work so that will lend more context to the conversation! 

Much of Csikszentmihalyi's writings centres around states of flow and attention while using technology, which ties in with the other topic which was the question of using technology to communicate a subject that is typically associated with the opposite technology.   Simone suggested looking at a TED Talk by Sherry Turkle which I will write about later today.   We also discussed what ways I could create stickiness in the app  - Simone suggested using something like a link to a meditation playlist on Spotify.  The how-to sections of the app would be the primary points of stickiness which would get users to keep coming back to the app.  

One of the things I brought up in my presentation was how I would make the icons, especially on the splash screen of the app, look so that their function was immediately apparent.  Simone said that she felt a good way around that would be to use modal windows, as I showed in the presentation, which the user could tap on and see what counter linked to what section of the app.

Draft dissertation structure

Contents Table

Abstract

Introduction

Contextual Review:

Theoreticals

• Semiotic Theory
• Gestalt Theory
• Flow 
• Technology relationships (Sherry Turkle etc)

Content

• Mindfulness and associated visuals
• Designing for the target audience
• How to create a state of stickiness in using the app

Design

• Relationships between illustration and typography
• The visual system and learning
• Print/screen relationships
• Aesthetic themes of the artwork in the app

Methodology

• Practice based research
• Case studies
• Survey - what & questions

Results

Results of the survey, what do they mean 

Style guide

Outcomes 

• Web prototypes
• Print posters

Analysis of evaluation

• What went well, what didn't

Conclusions

• Results
• Further discussion
• Further reading

References

Any necessary appendices

I plan to at least have much of the methodology section of the dissertation drafted by next week in order to get feedback, and hopefully have made a good crack at the literature review too (although that remains to be seen).