Interfaces for Staying in the Flow

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Interfaces for Staying in the Flow

• Benjamin B. Bederson
• Computer Science Department
• Human-Computer Interaction Lab
• University of Maryland
• www.cs.umd.edu/hcil
• bederson_at_cs.umd.edu

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Human Goals

• Life Goal Happiness
• Work Goal productivity, creativity, recognition,
  etc.

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Flow Folk Definition

• To move or run freely in the manner
  characteristic of a fluid
• Concentrate to the exclusion of all else
• To be in the zone
• Counter example Writer w/ writers block

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Flow Psychology Definition

• Optimal Experience see Flow by Mihaly
  Csikszentmihalyi (1990)
• Started by interviewing experts
• Then used Experience Sampling Method
• gt Characteristics of optimal experience
• gt Flow is universal, and is a combination of
  activity, individual and state of mind

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1. Challenge and Require Skill

• Person must expend effort to acquire skills, and
  then apply them
• Examples
• Tennis
• Programming
• Not passive or relaxing
• Not go with the flow

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2. Concentrate

• Ability to focus attention at length is crucial
• Focusing enables tuning out of other input
• People w/ A.D.D. at real disadvantage
• Examples
• Reading
• Painting

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3. Clear Goals and Feedback

• Must define success up front
• Clearly measure progress along path
• Examples
• Surgery
• Factory work

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4. Maintain Control

• Minimize loss of objective control
• Maximize subjective control
• Examples
• Mountain climbing
• Counter example Driving in traffic

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5. Transformation of Time

• Time flies
• Or, can slow down
• Examples
• Pottery
• New romantic interest

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Our Goal

• Build computer systems that work as a tool to
  support optimal experience
• ? But computers could never be that good. Youve
  described only simple tools.
• ? But isnt flow a fuzzy, unmeasurable and
  unscientific concept? And even if you could
  measure it, is it really important?

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Interfaces for Staying in the Flow

• How do these characteristics of flow apply to
  interface design?

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1. Challenge and Require Skill

• Interfaces should be
• neither so difficult as to discourage users
• nor so easy as to be boring

FlowChannel
DemoTimeSearcher
Anxiety
Challenges
Boredom
Skills
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2. Concentrate

• Avoid interruptions
• Stay in task domain, not interface domain

Three levels of interaction 1. Learn from the
interface 2. Feedback from the interface 3.
Autonomous interaction (no feedback necessary)
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2. Concentrate (cont.)

• Maintain object constancy
• Save short-term memory

DemoPhotoMesa
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3. Clear Goals and Feedback

• Help user to specify what they are doing
• And how they are getting there
• Many e-commercewebsites

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4. Maintain Control

• Challenge of Expert vs. Novice interfaces
  (controls vs. wizards) (Microsoft vs. Apple
  philosophy)
• Emacs vs. IDEs (Visual Studio Eclipse)
• Difficulty of learning
• Keyboard vs. mouse control
• Home keys vs. arrow/nav keys
• Integrated shell, grep, directory, etc.
• Filename completion, command history

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4. Maintain Control (cont.)

• Problem w/ adaptive interfaces
• Unpredictable
• Loss of objective control
• Leads to frustration and slow performance
• Encourage controllable,configurable interfaces

DemoFavorite Folders
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5. Transformation of Time

• Based on pyschology principle
• When interrupted, people will overestimate time
• Relative Subjective Duration (RSD) Czerwinski et
  al., Subjective Duration Assessment A New
  Metric for HCI, HCI 2001
• Avoids positive bias of subjective preference

DemoDateLens
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Summary

• Maintain lofty goals
• Computer as toolshould be an extension of our
  body
• Dont underestimate the importance of speed in
  supporting
• creativity
• quality
• enjoyment

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Design Principles

• Human memory is limited
• Modes are bad
• Input device switches are bad
• Maintain object constancy
• Minimize use of interface
• Balance features vs. ease-of-use

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Challenge

• Design for novices and experts is really hard,
  but important
• Dont forget the expert!

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Suggestion

• Add Relative Subjective Duration (RSD) to
  standard list of metrics
• gt Minimizing cognitive load and improving
  subjective satisfaction can help achieve optimal
  experience