Flow and E-Commerce

While getting my Master's in Educational Technology at SDSU we studied Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory as it related to Educational Gaming. It's something that also applies to the creation of a shopping Web site. The point being, if a site is too challenging (difficult to navigate, confusing) or if it's not engaging at all (boring) people won't want to go there. Finding the right mix of challenge and fun will help those who visit your site get into a "flow," a place where they are so engaged in what they are doing that they forget about time and the outside world.

Below is a segment of an article from informit.com about optimizing flow in Web design. I found it fascinating. It points out that for those serious about creating sites where people love to shop there's more to it than catchy graphics.

An Interview with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

To find out more about flow, speed, and web design, I talked to Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who popularized the notion of flow.

Andy King: You talk about immediate feedback being a prerequisite for the flow state. How does speed of interaction influence flow?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: If you mean the speed at which the program loads, the screens change, the commands are carried out—then indeed speed should correlate with flow. If you are playing a fantasy game, for instance, and it takes time to move from one level to the next, then the interruption allows you to get distracted, to lose the concentration on the alternate reality. You have time to think: "Why am I wasting time on this? Shouldn't I be taking the dog for a walk, or studying?"—and the game is over, psychologically speaking.

King: Responsive feedback of an activity and feelings of control go hand in hand. Can you elaborate on that?

Csikszentmihalyi: Actually it's not so much the "feeling" of control, as the fact that you can act without thinking, without interruption, and making your own choices (for example, BEING in control). If a computer program has a mind of its own, is not responsive to your commands, or is so slow as to appear to be a moron, then you are again brought back to "reality" and lose flow.

King: Has your definition of flow changed over the years?

Csikszentmihalyi: The only change has been that we found it takes above average challenges AND skills to get into flow. Also, there seem to be individual differences so that some people prefer to be in control (that is, high skill, moderate challenge) to being in flow.

King: You said that web sites should be like a gourmet meal to enable flow. Can you elaborate?

Csikszentmihalyi: What I meant is that like in a good meal, you should have varieties of tastes and textures, metaphorically speaking.

King: What do you think the key attributes would be of web sites that enable flow?

Csikszentmihalyi: The key attribute is that it should be very user-friendly and transparent at first, but one should immediately be able to find complexity in it, so as to find quickly the right level of opportunities for "action" that match one's skills. These "challenges" include the visual aspects as well as the content.

Shopping Site Design

Hoffman, Novak, and Yung performed an additional survey on web shopping using a list of features that shoppers found important on the Internet. They found customer support to be very important for a "smooth" shopping experience. Speed plays a role in a compelling shopping experience, contributing significantly to ease of contact and variety.

Variety and quality of information are important to consumers. Shoppers don't want cutting-edge technology, however. It just gets in the way of consumer goals.