Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Andy Polaine

Andy Polaine — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:46:12 GMT

Flow and interactivity is part of my PhD. I wrote a paper all about it a few years back: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1109204

I can send anyone who is interested the complete text.

Andy Polaine — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:55:24 GMT

It’s also worth noting that a significant part of Csikszentmihalyi’s theory is that many of the activities are ‘auto-telic’ – they’re intrinsically satisfying in and of themselves and aren’t about doing something in order to achieve some extrinsic goal. Plenty has been written about interaction design principles to aid users to achieve a certain task, but there’s little about the intrinsic pleasure of interactivity in it’s own right.

In other words, some things are pleasant to use and do (often related to bodily motion, even when using the mouse and keyboard) regardless of the goal or task in hand. Building some of those intrinsic pleasures into an interface makes a huge difference to the level of play and playfulness of the interface, which in turn creates both a relaxed and exploratory state of mind in the user (which means they’ll find the interface easier to use even if it isn’t, because they’ll explore other options more) and it also helps them learn the interface faster without thinking about it as a task. It’s one of the things Apple do well, especially on the iPhone/iTouch. The playfulness of the interface is not to be under-estimated. Plenty of people ‘just want to have a go on one’ regardless of the tasks or functions they may or may not want to carry out.

Andy Polaine — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 08:16:06 GMT

Trevor, although Csikszentmihalyi does differentiate between pleasure and enjoyment, his differentiation is highly subjective, as is explanation of what activities create the flow state (especially in his earlier books and papers). He specifically dismisses videogames, for example, stating that they only allow players/users to live out activities vicariously compared to mountain climbing, hiking and so forth. This is clearly not the case because flow states are repeatedly reported by gamers and, indeed, inducing it has been one of the hallmarks of compelling game design. The progress through levels whilst attaining skills to attempt and subsequently complete the next level is classic boredom and anxiety balance. Yet Csikszentmihalyi’s account smacks of ignorance of this medium and sounds to me more like “those kids should jolly well go for a brisk walk and get some fresh air to achieve their flow experience” rather than anything more concrete.

The distinction, in this case, is also a false one, because they are so interrelated. You can derive pleasure from pain, enjoyment from pain, pleasure from experiencing something unpleasant, even, if only in the negative of being relieved of the unpleasantness. You can also derive enjoyment from something unpleasant and be totally bored by something pleasant.

Csikszentmihalyi’s definition of auto-telic is based around satisfaction, which escapes the pleasure/enjoyment confusion: “The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if initially undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically rewarding [...] it refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the reward.” (1990, p.67 in my edition).

The main point here is that interaction designers can encourage this self-contained activity, the intrinsically rewarding aspect unrelated to future benefit through the design of interactions and interfaces that are rewarding in themselves to use. Interfaces that are satisfying in their own right encourage users to play with them and explore them further, which means they learn them without thinking about learning them.

Andy Polaine — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:59:08 GMT

You should check out the Omnium software (disclaimer: I’ve been involved with the project for some time). It’s mainly used for online collaborative teaching projects, often worldwide, but has a pretty good set of features. For this particular use it would need some expanding, but it’s open source so if anyone with the skills out there wants to get stuck in, they would be welcome. I teach (design and interaction design) students with it to Australia from here in Germany and really like it. http://www.omnium.net.au/software