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Crafting Fun User Experiences:
A Method to Facilitate Flow
“Designing for flow is important for
internal business applications, like a system
used by bank tellers or people working in a call center.
Finding meaningful challenges and getting clear feedback
about progress on those challenges is the best way
to make even boring or repetitive work
more like an enjoyable game.”
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 3
OOwweenn,, yyoouu’’vvee bbeeeenn ddooiinngg aa lloott ooff wwoorrkk wwiitthh ppeerrssuuaassiivvee ddeessiiggnn.. HHooww ddooeess mmaakkiinngg
ddeessiiggnnss mmoorree ffuunn rreellaattee ttoo ppeerrssuuaassiivvee ddeessiiggnn??
Making designs more fun allows companies to engage their customers and give
them an experience that will have them wanting to come back again and again.
There are many different kinds of fun, but the fun of enjoying doing something
for its own sake must be our top priority if we want to make designs that people
will want to use. Positive psychologists call this kind of fun "flow.”
Persuasion can be thought of as a story that goes from a trustworthy first
impression, through an engaging emotional experience, to persuasion that will
convince customers to take the desired action. The persuasion story continues
with the sense of relationship customers feel with your business that leads to
repeat business and loyalty. At each part of this persuasion story, we make
designs more persuasive with different Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust (PET)
tools. Flow is all about that emotional engagement part of the persuasion story.
I went to Claremont Graduate University to work with Mihály Csíkszentmihályi,
the psychologist who created the concept of flow. He was still teaching at age 77,
and he became my research advisor. With his help, I developed the Flow
Condition Questionnaire (See Appendix, page 19), a measure of the conditions
required to get into flow. The FCQ can make usability testing a better diagnostic
tool. With the FCQ, we can go beyond finding and fixing usability problems. We
can use the FCQ to create engaging and enjoyable user experiences. We can engi-
neer designs people will want to use again and again.
We can't just make designs easier to use anymore. We have to make things
people will want to use. When designs are fun to use, people will want to use
them. So we have to make things that are fun to use.
WWhhaatt iiss ffllooww??
Flow is the experience of doing something just because you enjoy doing it.
It's the feeling of being "in the zone" while enjoying overcoming challenges.
In a flow state, time seems to fly by as attention becomes effortlessly focused on
the activity. Attention is so absorbed by the activity that no attention is left over
to notice time passing and get bored, to worry about the future, or to worry
about what others will think of us.
Share this white paper:
“We can’t just make
designs easier to
use anymore. We
have to make things
people will want to
use.”
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
4
Flow is the experience of doing intrinsically motivated activities. Rather than
focusing on what needs are satisfied or what benefits we get from the activity,
flow focuses on the immediate and moment-to-moment experience of doing
things for their own sake.
The experience of flow is:
• Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
• Merging of action and awareness
• Loss of reflective self-consciousness (loss of awareness of oneself as a
social actor)
• A sense that one can deal with the situation because one knows how to
respond to whatever happens next
• Distortion of temporal experience (typically a sense that time has
passed faster than normal)
• Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, such that often the
end goal is just an excuse for the process
The flow experience is surprisingly consistent across activities, whether the
person thinks the activity is play or work. The research on flow across
wide-ranging samples and diverse activities shows how positive the experience is.
People in flow experience effortless concentration, enjoyment, and satisfaction.
They want to be doing what they are doing. They feel like something is at stake in
the activity and feel the activity is important to their future goals. Their self
esteem grows, and they feel in control of their situation. People in flow also feel
happy, strong, active, involved, creative, free, excited, open, and clear.
HHooww ddoo wwee ggeett iinnttoo ffllooww??
The conditions required to get into flow, or the flow conditions, are:
• High perceived challenges
• High perceived skills
• Knowing what to do
• Knowing how to do it
• Knowing how well you are doing
• Knowing where to go (where navigation is involved)
• Freedom from distractions
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“Flow is consistent
across activities,
whether the person
thinks the activity is
play or work.”
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 5
By measuring how well designs meet these flow conditions and exploring how
they can better meet the flow conditions, we can engineer designs that facilitate
flow.
There’s been a lot of confusion around the “clear goals” flow condition.
Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura (2010) clarified that it’s not about having an
overall goal for the activity. It’s about knowing what to do next from moment to
moment. So in rock climbing, you have to know the next piece of rock to move
your hand or foot to – it’s not about reaching the top of the mountain.
It is not enough to just know what to do; you also have to know how to do it. If
navigation is involved, you also have to know where to go. You have to be able to
concentrate, so you must also be free from distractions that would interrupt your
attention.
When the flow conditions have been met, users are able to engage in a series of
challenging tasks that are not too difficult (not overwhelming), nor too easy
(not boring). Every step of the way, it is obvious to users what to do next, how to
do it, where to go next, and how well they are doing so they can continuously
adjust their performance based on continuous, immediate feedback. In this way,
the flow conditions create a flow loop, an unimpeded loop between action and
feedback that allows for continuous and effortless tuning of performance while
taking action. Flow loops make an activity worth doing for its own sake.
Users effortlessly go from one task to the next, continuously adjusting their
performance to tackle the challenges they face. Action and awareness merge as
all of their attention is taken up by the activity with none left over to experience
boredom, anxiety, self-consciousness, to ruminate about the past or future, or
even enough attention to notice bodily discomfort. This is what leads to the
experience of flow.
HHooww ddoo wwee ccrreeaattee ffllooww llooooppss??
Creating flow loops means creating environments that allow users to play around
with inputs or controls. It means creating challenges that are neither too easy,
nor too difficult. It means giving immediate feedback that allows users to
continuously adjust their performance as they tackle these challenges.
Share this white paper:
“Users go from one
task to the next,
continuously
adjusting their per-
formance to tackle
the challenges they
face.”
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 6
Let’s take the Adidas.com’s shoe customizer as an example. You can change the
color of each part of the shoe and right away see how the whole shoe will look
with that change. You can add a jewel to the laces with your country’s flag. You
can embroider the strap with anything you type and in any color you want.
The challenge of the activity is finding the right shoe for you. The controls let you
input all of these customization options. And the feedback is seeing right away
what the shoe will look like after you make each change – not at the end after
you have chosen all the options. This creates a flow loop.
Adidas shoe customizer
DuoLingo.com is another good example of a flow loop. It's a free
language-learning website that uses the practice work of the students to
crowd-source text translation. The call to action is a sentence to translate and a
text box with a blinking cursor to enter your translation. The challenge is getting
the translation correct. After you enter your answer, you press enter or click
continue and a green checkmark and the words "You are correct" give you
immediate feedback showing how well you did. Then you can press enter or click
the “Continue” button to go to the next sentence to translate.
Examples of
flow loops
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Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 7
The loop between an opportunity to tackle a challenge, performance feedback,
and a new call to action forms a flow loop:
Flow loop model with flow conditions
The same can be done with the challenge of finding the right hotel with the
controls being search filters and the feedback being hotel listings with pictures
of the rooms. Auction websites are all about making a competitive game out of
out-bidding others – bidding wars. Surfing from product to product on
Amazon.com using the “people who bought this also bought…” and the site’s
recommendations is certainly a kind of searching game because they have
created an interconnected network of products, like a virtual jungle-gym.
Flow loop model
with flow
conditions
Share this white paper:
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 8
WWhheenn wwee ddoo uussaabbiilliittyy wwee’’rree aallwwaayyss ttrryyiinngg ttoo mmaakkee tthhiinnggss eeaassiieerr ttoo uussee,, bbuutt wwiitthh
ffllooww wwee’’rree ddeessiiggnniinngg cchhaalllleennggiinngg eexxppeerriieenncceess.. WWhhaatt’’ss uupp wwiitthh tthhaatt??
The challenge that gets us into flow is the difficulty of the activity itself.
Progressing through a series of challenges the activity presents to us gets us into
flow. We're motivated by enjoying the challenges of the activity. These challenges
are part of the activity, not outside of it. This is why flow is intrinsically
motivating rather than extrinsically motivating: the motivation is intrinsic
to the activity.
Usability handles a different kind of difficulty. An interface that is difficult to use
is like a broken tool or instrument. If you are playing jazz on a saxophone, a
broken saxophone will not make it more fun to play. Playing more and more
challenging music will make it more fun! Improvising is especially fun because
you can control how challenging it is to play from moment to moment.
Just like a broken instrument, an interface that is difficult to use is a frustration
that is not part of the challenge of the activity. It's the activity we want to make
challenging - not the interface, tool, or instrument.
GGaammiiffiiccaattiioonn iiss aa hhoott ttooppiicc tthheessee ddaayyss.. WWhhaatt iiss ggaammiiffiiccaattiioonn??
Gamification means making non-game designs more like games. But what is a
game, and why do we want to make designs more like games?
Games are unnecessary obstacles we volunteer to overcome. Players volunteer to
overcome these obstacles because overcoming them is enjoyable. Tackling the
challenges gets them into flow. The core of what makes games fun is that games
get players into flow.
When we create flow loops and make sure the flow conditions are being satisfied
in designs that are not games, we are making them more like games. So this is
certainly one kind of gamification.
Unfortunately, much of what is being called gamification has focused on adding
rewards external to the activity, such as points, achievement badges, or virtual
currency. The problem is that rewards external to the activity extinguish the
flame of intrinsic motivation. In other words, trying to motivate users with
rewards can make them feel controlled and less like they are playing a fun game.
“An interface that is
difficult to use is a
frustration that is
not part of the
challenge of the
activity. It’s the
activity we want to
make challenging,
not the interface.”
Share this white paper:
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 9
Some are even shifting away from the word gamification because it has been
used (or perhaps misused) so much to mean trying to control people with
rewards. "Gameful design" also means making designs more like games, but it is
focused on designing for flow, positive emotions, relationships, meaning, and
other concepts from positive psychology. Personally, I prefer "engineering
intrinsic motivation" or simply "making designs more fun.”
HHooww ddoo wwee eennggiinneeeerr ddeessiiggnnss tthhaatt ggeett uusseerrss iinnttoo ffllooww??
Usability testing is the standard when it comes to making designs easier to use.
Participants come into a usability lab and are asked to think aloud and perform
realistic tasks. Performance and behavior are observed to diagnose usability
problems.
We can use the Flow Condition Questionnaire (FCQ) to make usability testing an
even better diagnostic tool (See Appendix, page 19). The FCQ diagnoses how well
designs satisfy the flow conditions. Using the FCQ during usability testing is the
ideal way to engineer designs that facilitate flow.
Engineering designs that facilitate flow can be divided into 5 steps:
1) Identify your target experience
2) Choose baselines for comparison
3) Gather data
4) Analyze data and redesign based on insights of the data gathering
5) Iterate, iterate, iterate
SStteepp 11:: IIddeennttiiffyy yyoouurr ttaarrggeett eexxppeerriieennccee
Because flow is such a positive experience, designing for flow will likely be our
aim much of the time. However, there are some cases where other positive
experiences may be more appropriate or desirable. There may even be different
target experiences for different parts of the intended experience.
Step 1:
Identify your target
experience
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Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 10
For example, successful video games are often designed to go back and forth
between intense, high-challenge moments of flow and moments of relaxation
where the player can take a breather and prepare for the next moment of
intense flow. So it is important to meet with stakeholders to agree on what the
intended experience will be for each part of the user experience. Depending on
the scope of the project, this could mean for each user task, for each set of tasks
(scenario), or for each feature of the design.
The combination of different levels of challenge and skill predict 8 different
experiences:
The Experience Fluctuation Model showing the 8 channels of experience
The first four channels are all positive in different degrees and are appropriate in
different circumstances: arousal, flow, control, and relaxation. The last four are
all negative: boredom, apathy, worry, and anxiety.
The experience
fluctuation model
showing the 8
channels of
experience
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Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 11
Flow involves intense and effortless concentration, intrinsic motivation,
importance to future goals, self-esteem, and positive emotions. When your
stakeholders want users to actively engage with challenges that require their full
attention, they want that part of the design to get users into flow. This means
your target is the flow channel of experience, high perceived challenges and high
perceived skills. Keep in mind that skills and challenges are just two of the flow
conditions – the others are just as critical.
Like flow, relaxation is an enjoyable experience we enjoy doing for its own sake.
But relaxation is not challenging, so it requires little or no concentration. While
flow involves expending energy and using skills to face more and more complex
challenges, relaxation is about conserving and regenerating energy. Typical
relaxation activities include eating, personal care, and doing chores and errands.
When your stakeholders want users to rest rather than concentrate on tackling
challenges, your target experience is relaxation, the channel of experience with
high perceived skills and low perceived challenge.
Control is between flow and relaxation, when users are more challenged than
they would be if they were just relaxed, but not yet challenged enough to stretch
their skills. Control is a transition channel between flow and relaxation. There are
not many cases where you would aim for the control channel, but it is predicted
by high perceived skills and average perceived challenges.
Arousal is the uncomfortable experience of being pushed beyond what we
believe we are capable of that forces us to grow our capabilities to meet the
challenges we face. Arousal is good for learning and good for people who like to
push themselves beyond their comfort zone. But being outside our comfort zone
is by definition uncomfortable. If your stakeholders want to push users beyond
their capabilities, arousal is the target experience. That means your target is high
perceived challenges and only average perceived skills to meet them.
The boredom, anxiety, worry, and apathy channels of experience are all various
shades of bad news. When users experience low challenges and average skills to
face them, they are in the boredom channel. High challenges and low skills to
face them, they are overwhelmed and in the anxiety channel. Low challenges
with average or low skills to face them leads to worry or apathy.
“When your stake-
holders want users
to actively engage
with challenges
that require their
full attention, they
want that part of
the design to get
users into flow.”
Share this white paper:
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 12
For each task or scenario the user will face, identify if the intended experience is
engagement, control, relaxation, or painfully fast learning. Meet with your
stakeholders and work with them to come to agreement on the intended
moment-to-moment user experience.
To make it simpler, you can ask if each part of the experience is supposed to be
activity (flow), rest (relaxation), or uncomfortably fast learning (arousal) and just
leave out control unless they want something between flow and relaxation.
A hotel booking website, for example, could aim for flow while searching for a
hotel and relaxation while booking the room. This means high challenge is better
for the search while low challenge is better for the booking experience.
If there is an existing version of the design, it may also help to identify which of
the channels of experience they feel the current design is giving users. Show
your stakeholders the Experience Fluctuation Model and get their opinion. Even if
their opinion doesn’t turn out to be accurate, it makes the executive intent
clear – they want the redesign to take it from boredom to flow, or from
anxiety to relaxation, for example.
SStteepp 22:: CChhoooossee bbaasseelliinneess ffoorr ccoommppaarriissoonn
Having numbers to compare the scores that you get helps put them into context.
Baselines give us a point of reference. There are two good baselines for
comparison: competitors’ designs and previous versions of your designs.
Testing competitor’s designs is sometimes called benchmarking. If participants
are randomly assigned to be either in study of the competitor’s design (control)
or the study of your design (treatment), with participants having an equal chance
of being in either study, you’ve got an experimental study design - technically an
unblinded randomized control trial.
Iterative testing and redesign allow us to show how the current design compares
with previous versions of the design. Showing how the user experience changes
as the design evolves throughout the design process is the best practice because
it is specific to your design and therefore more directly comparable. Still, more
points of reference are helpful.
Step 2:
Choose baselines
for comparison
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Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 13
SStteepp 33:: GGaatthheerr DDaattaa
After participants complete each task or scenario during the usability test, we
gather data with the Flow Condition Questionnaire (See Appendix, page 19). The
FCQ assesses how well the design has met the 7 flow conditions. In cases where
navigation is not involved, the Clear Navigation Goal question can be dropped.
Follow each FCQ with a brief interview to understand what it was about the
design that led to their answers. These qualitative data can give us critical
insights into how we can improve the design and make it more likely to lead to
the intended user experience.
The target experience for each task should be kept in mind during these brief
follow-up interviews, but not shared with participants to avoid biasing them.
The target experience only affects how we interpret and value the challenge and
skill conditions – we always want the others to be high. Our goal is to explore
how well the current user experience fits the intended experience, what elements
of the design support the intended experience, and what elements need to be
improved.
The follow-up interviews can draw our attention to problems with the design -
usability problems as well as problems preventing the flow conditions from being
met. But it is important to keep in mind that the participants’ understanding of
the cause or solution of the problem may not be correct. So it is up to us to
figure out what the problem is and how it can be improved.
SStteepp 44:: AAnnaallyyzzee ddaattaa aanndd aappppllyy iinnssiigghhttss ooff tthhee ddaattaa ggaatthheerriinngg ttoo rreeddeessiiggnn
The most important part of engineering designs that foster flow is taking the
task-level qualitative data about what elements of the design fostered or
undermined flow and applying that feedback to the redesign. This is how the
Flow Condition Questionnaire (FCQ) helps us improve designs.
Steps 3 and 4:
Gathering and
analyzing data
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Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 14
Most of the number crunching is just directly comparing descriptive statistics –
frequency charts and median scores. For each user task, chart the median rating
of each flow condition across participants. This highlights which flow conditions
need the most improvement for each task:
Sample Flow Condition Chart
If you want to compare the results from your study with the results from a
previous version of the design or with a benchmarking study of a competitor,
it’s better to use a U test (also known as the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test) to
compare median scores, the non-parametric version of the t-test.
SStteepp 55:: IItteerraattee,, iitteerraattee,, iitteerraattee
Begin the process again, with the results from the previous study as another
baseline. Iterative (repeated) cycles of testing and redesign are the best practice
for continuous improvement.
If you find obviously needed changes, make them! That way you can begin testing
the improved design. There’s even a usability testing method that came out of
Microsoft’s games user research lab where changes are made after rounds of just
1-3 participants.Even if the changes create new problems, it is better to find that
out sooner rather than later so a better solution can be found.
Step 5:
Iterate,
Iterate,
Iterate
Share this white paper:
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 15
TThhiiss ssoouunnddss vveerryy rreelleevvaanntt ffoorr BBuussiinneessss--ttoo--CCoonnssuummeerr ((BB22CC)) ddeessiiggnnss,, bbuutt iiss ffllooww rreell--
eevvaanntt ffoorr BBuussiinneessss--ttoo--BBuussiinneessss ((BB22BB)) ssyysstteemmss??
Of course! More than that, flow is relevant for designing any human activity to be
more motivating and enjoyable. Company buyers are still human beings, and
keeping them motivated and engaged while they are purchasing raw materials is
not that different from keeping customers motivated.
We were just doing a project for a major steel manufacturer in China. Their main
customers are buyers from other businesses. So their users may have more
expertise in their domain, but they are still human beings and still motivated by
enjoyment. The price negotiation design we suggested was very well received
because it turned the challenge of finding a price the buyer and seller could
accept into a source of flow, creating a kind of haggling game.
Designing for flow is also important for internal business applications, like a
system used by bank tellers or people working in a call center. Finding
meaningful challenges and getting clear feedback about progress on those
challenges is the best way to make even boring or repetitive work more like an
enjoyable game. The FCQ helps us focus on these flow conditions so we can
create designs that make work more fun.
Imagine sitting in a call center, on the phone 8 hours a day, on the same kind of
call again and again. Of course you'll be less frustrated if the system you're using
is quick and easy to use. So usability is still important. But to get you engaged
and motivated, the system you're using has to make your work more fun: the
design needs to facilitate flow.
WWhhaatt''ss tthhee mmaaiinn ppooiinntt yyoouu wwaanntt eevveerryyoonnee wwhhoo rreeaaddss tthhiiss ttoo rreemmeemmbbeerr??
Using the Flow Condition Questionnaire, we can engineer designs that are more
fun to use because they get users into flow.
We have to go beyond making things easier to use. Let's make things fun to use.
Use the Flow
Condition
Questionnaire to
engineer designs
that are more fun
to use.
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Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 16
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: The Experience of Play
in Work and Games. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Optimal Experience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New
York, NY, US: HarperCollins Publishers.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. & LeFevre, J. (1989). Optimal Experience in Work and Leisure.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5, 815-822.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. & Nakamura, J. (2010). Effortless Attention in Everyday Life:
A Systematic Phenomenology . In Bruya, B. (Ed.), Effortless Attention. (pp. 179-
190). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18, 105–115.
Deci E. L. & Ryan R. M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in
Human Behavior. New York: Plenum Publishing.
Delle Fave, A., Massimini, F., Bassi, M. (2011). Psychological Selection and Optimal
Experience Across Cultures: Social Empowerment through Personal Growth.
Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Science+Business Media.
deVries, M. W. (Ed.) (1992). The Experience of Psychopathology: Investigating
Mental Disorders in Their Natural Settings. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press.
Hektner, J. M., Schmidt, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2007). Experience sampling
method: Measuring the quality of everyday life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M (2002). The Concept of Flow. In Snyder, C. R.,
Lopez, & Shane J. (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology (pp. 89-105). New York:
Oxford University Press.
Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Flow theory and research. In S. J.
Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed., pp.
195–206). New York: Oxford University Press.
References
Share this white paper:
Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 17
McGonigal, J. (2011a). Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How
They Can Change the World. London: Penguin.
McGonigal, J. (2011b). We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges: How to Re-invent
Reality Without Gamification. Serious Games Summit, Game Developers
Conference. Retrieved from: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014576/We-Don-t-
Need-No April 1st, 2013.
Medlock, M.C., Wixon, D., Terrano, M., Romero, R., Fulton, B. (2002). Using the
RITE method to improve products: a definition and a case study. Proc. Usability
Professionals Association (Orlando FL, July 2002).
Pagulayan, R. J., Keeker, K., Fuller, T., Wixon, D., Romero, R. (2008). User-centered
design in games. In A. Sears and J. Jacko (Eds.), The Human-Computer Interaction
Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies, and Emerging Applications (2nd
ed., pp.741-759). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
References
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Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow
— A Conversation with Owen Schaffer
White Paper Crafting Fun Experiences: A Method to Facilitate Flow 18
Share this white paper:
Owen Schaffer is an expert in user research, applying psychology and
human-computer interaction research to making designs more engaging,
usable, and enjoyable.
He received his Master’s in Positive Organizational Psychology and Evaluation from
Claremont Graduate University. He studied positive psychology and flow with
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, co-founder of the field of positive psychology and author
of
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
. Working with Csikszentmihalyi, he
developed measures of flow and the conditions that get players into flow.
Owen has taught advanced Human Computer Interaction (HCI) training courses in
the Certified User Experience Analyst (CXA) Series, such as,
How to Design for
Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust (PET)
. He has presented at conferences and
universities, including Peking University, UX Week, and the Top 100 case study
conference.
He has lived in Canada, India, and Japan, and is now living in China.
About
Owen Schaffer
Owen Schaffer, MA, CUA
Lead Usability Analyst
Human Factors International
Flow Condition Questionnaire (FCQ)
Owen Schaffer
Please indicate how much of the time you knew each of the following
while you were doing the activity by marking one circle for each question.
How much of the time did you know…?
Never
About half
of the time Always
what to do next { { { { {
how to do what you were doing { { { { {
how well you were doing { { { { {
where to go next { { { { {
Please answer the following questions about how you felt
while you were doing the activity by marking one circle for each question.
Not at all Very
much
How challenging did this activity feel? { { { { {
How much did you feel able to
overcome the challenges you faced? { { { { {
How distracted were you from what
you were doing? { { { { {
Scoring
Reverse the score of the last question to get Freedom from Distractions. The items
above are in the following order: Clear What to Do, Clear How to Do it, Clear How Well
Doing, Clear Where to Go, Challenge, Skill, and Freedom from Distractions.
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