Blog 3 Just flow man yeah!
"See its all about flow dude, you've just got to imerse yourself into the zone and shut out all other influences yeah. Its all about feeding your mind without ruining the environment bro."
I'm not talking about drugs, i'm not on drugs either, in case you were wondering, no no no, this week in IMS we have looked at Mihali Cisikzentmihalis' flow theory and how it relates to users of interactive media.
According to the above theorist with the riddiculous name 'Flow is the process of optimal experience'. Hoffman and Novak (1996) suggest that 'the degree to which a users online experiences produces flow determines likelihood of continued use of the web."
Basically, the more imersed a person becomes in a website the more likely they are to want to return and use it again.
To experiment whether flow actually does occur when using the internet, we were set a group task. One member of the group would surf the web, the other members would be observers, with one observer looking at what the surfer was veiwing on the screen and how they were engaging with the website and the other observer looking at the surfers body language and facial experessions. A series of distractions orchestrated by the evil Molesworth were employed to see if the surfers could be taken out of thier transfixed states.
My group consisted of Ellie, Dan and Myself, Dan took the hotseat and volunteerd to be the surfer, I was in charge of looking at his onscreen behaviour and Ellie watched his every move. (spooky eh) Dan was set the task of finding a DVD recorder, he very quickly imersed himself in the task and was soon systematically looking through reveiw websites, price comparison sites and online stores to find the best deal and the best product. He actually began to create his own personal data sheet, by copying text from reveiws and product information from the store sites into a word document. The only distraction which got Daniels attention was when Mike kicked a bin across the room, this proved that Dan had easilly imeresed himself into the task and it took a great deal to bring him back into the real world. Ellie noticed that his face expressed extreme concentration, and he appeared oblivious to being watched, she also noticed that on some occasions he physically moved himself closer to the screen when he needed to input information or when he was reading an interesting article.
Although we all concluded that this experiment had its limitations due to its lab style environment, it was clear that Dan had experenced some level of flow and that Hoffman and Novaks hypothesis, may carry some weight.
See you next time
I'm not talking about drugs, i'm not on drugs either, in case you were wondering, no no no, this week in IMS we have looked at Mihali Cisikzentmihalis' flow theory and how it relates to users of interactive media.
According to the above theorist with the riddiculous name 'Flow is the process of optimal experience'. Hoffman and Novak (1996) suggest that 'the degree to which a users online experiences produces flow determines likelihood of continued use of the web."
Basically, the more imersed a person becomes in a website the more likely they are to want to return and use it again.
To experiment whether flow actually does occur when using the internet, we were set a group task. One member of the group would surf the web, the other members would be observers, with one observer looking at what the surfer was veiwing on the screen and how they were engaging with the website and the other observer looking at the surfers body language and facial experessions. A series of distractions orchestrated by the evil Molesworth were employed to see if the surfers could be taken out of thier transfixed states.
My group consisted of Ellie, Dan and Myself, Dan took the hotseat and volunteerd to be the surfer, I was in charge of looking at his onscreen behaviour and Ellie watched his every move. (spooky eh) Dan was set the task of finding a DVD recorder, he very quickly imersed himself in the task and was soon systematically looking through reveiw websites, price comparison sites and online stores to find the best deal and the best product. He actually began to create his own personal data sheet, by copying text from reveiws and product information from the store sites into a word document. The only distraction which got Daniels attention was when Mike kicked a bin across the room, this proved that Dan had easilly imeresed himself into the task and it took a great deal to bring him back into the real world. Ellie noticed that his face expressed extreme concentration, and he appeared oblivious to being watched, she also noticed that on some occasions he physically moved himself closer to the screen when he needed to input information or when he was reading an interesting article.
Although we all concluded that this experiment had its limitations due to its lab style environment, it was clear that Dan had experenced some level of flow and that Hoffman and Novaks hypothesis, may carry some weight.
See you next time
posted by Ed Povey at 6:16 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home