The mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.
Takeaways
- Flow occurs when there is a balance between the difficulty of a task with the level of skill at the given task. It’s characterized by intense and focused concentration on the present, combined with a sense of total control.
- A task that’s too difficult leads to heighten frustration while a task that’s too easy can lead to boredom. Finding the right balance requires matching the challenge with skill of the user.
- Design for flow by providing the necessary feedback so that the user know what action has been done and what has been accomplished.
- Optimize for efficiency and system responsiveness by removing any unnecessary friction, and making content and features available for discovery to avoid disengagement with the interface.
Origins
Flow was coined by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1975 and has been widely referred to across a variety of fields (and is particularly well recognized in occupational therapy), though the concept has been claimed to have existed for thousands of years under other names.