Steven Pace, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Informatics & Communication [HREF1], Central Queensland University [HREF2], Mackay, Queensland, 4740. E-mail: s.pace@cqu.edu.au
Pace (2004) has proposed a grounded theory of the flow experiences of Web users engaged in information-seeking activities. The term flow refers to a state of consciousness that individuals experience when their attention is intently focused on an enjoyable activity that is challenging, but achievable. Pace's (2004) theory suggests that the flow experiences of Web users depend on a complex network of factors, most of which are beyond the influence of Web designers. However, the theory also offers some ideas about how to create sites that encourage flow experiences, or at least minimise obstructions that prevent the experience from occurring.
Pace (2004) has proposed a grounded theory of the flow experiences of Web users engaged in information-seeking activities. The term flow refers to a state of consciousness that individuals experience when their attention is intently focused on an enjoyable activity that is challenging, but achievable (Csikszentmihalyi 1975, 1990, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1999). The flow experiences of Web users are characterised by some common elements: a balance between the challenges of an activity and the skills required to meet those challenges; focused attention on the task at hand; a joy of discovery; a reduced awareness of factors that are irrelevant to the task at hand; a distorted sense of time; a merging of action and awareness; a sense of control; mental alertness; and in some circumstances, telepresence (Chen, Wigand & Nilan 1999, 2000; Hoffman & Novak 1996; Novak, Hoffman & Yung 2000; Pace 2004). To illustrate these ideas, consider the following description of a flow experience provided by a 35-year-old male Web user:
… I just come home from work and I just want to relax and I'll sit in front of the computer. You know, I'm tired and I'll think, 'I'll just surf the Web for a half hour or something and go to bed'. And before you know it, it's like two or three hours have gone … Sometimes my wife will be going to bed and she may put a load of washing on and she'll say, 'Can you just hang that out when it finishes'. 'Yeah righto'. And then you totally forget all about it … You know she spoke to you, but you just push it to the back of your mind and carry on … When you're really concentrating on one thing, you just don't retain any information about another thing.
Web users are not the only individuals who experience flow. The phenomenon has been studied in many different contexts, such as reading (McQuillan & Conde 1996), working (Allison & Duncan 1988) and playing sport (Jackson 1996), to mention a few. The activities that people engage in to experience flow vary enormously, but they describe how it feels in almost identical terms.
Understanding the flow experiences of Web users is important because there is evidence to suggest that the behaviour of users toward new information technologies is shaped by their holistic experiences with the technology, and not just the usability or instrumentality of the technology. Carroll and Thomas (1988, p. 22) were among the first to observe that enjoyable human-computer interactions have 'powerful influences on what people will even try to do and on how long they will persist'. Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw (1992, p. 1125) demonstrated that 'increasing the enjoyment of using a system helps to get a productive system accepted by users'. More recent research conducted by Agarwal and Karahanna (2000, p. 688) highlighted 'the importance of eschewing a strictly utilitarian perspective on the usage of information technologies', and prompted them to make this prediction:
As technology developments continue to focus on richer and more appealing interfaces, the importance of experiences that are intrinsically motivating, i.e., pleasurable and enjoyable in and of themselves, might dominate as predictors of usage intentions.
The concept map in Figure 1 outlines Pace's (2004) grounded theory of the flow experiences of Web users. The boxes in the diagram represent concepts and the arrows represent relationships between concepts. Each box in the diagram is numbered so that concepts and relationships may be easily referred to in this paper.
Pace's (2004) theory suggests that the flow experiences of Web users depend on a complex network of factors, most of which are beyond the influence of Web designers. For example, Figure 1 identifies certain characteristics of a user's personality, a user's information-seeking activity and a user's environment as being important factors. However, the theory also offers some ideas about the role that Web design plays in the flow experiences of Web users. These design-related implications of the theory are the focus of this paper. The ideas which follow should not be interpreted as some kind of recipe for creating a flow-inducing Web site. Rather, they are suggestions for creating sites that encourage flow experiences, or at least minimise obstructions that prevent the experience from occurring.
Figure 1. Concept map depicting a grounded theory of the flow experiences of Web users. Adapted from Pace (2004).
The research method that was employed for this study was grounded theory—a primarily inductive investigative process (Glaser 1978, 1992, 1998; Glaser & Strauss 1967). Grounded theory is formulated from data using a constant comparative method of analysis with three stages:
The aim of this qualitative research method is building theory, not testing theory. Grounded concepts are suggested, not proven. The resulting theory is an integrated set of propositions, not findings (Glaser 1978, p. 134; Glaser & Strauss 1967, p. 103). A grounded theory researcher does not begin an investigation with a preconceived theory that needs to be proven. Rather, the researcher begins with a general area of study and allows the theory to emerge from the data. Strauss and Corbin (1998, p. 12) describe the rationale for this approach:
Theory derived from data is more likely to resemble the "reality" than is theory derived by putting together a series of concepts based on experience or solely through speculation (how one thinks things ought to work).
The data that was gathered for this study primarily consisted of in-depth interviews with twenty-two informants of varying gender, age, educational attainments, occupations and Web experience who could recall experiencing flow while using the Web. The informants were selected according to their potential for developing new insights using a procedure known as theoretical sampling. Unlike statistical sampling, which aims to be representative of the population under study, theoretical sampling aims to maximise opportunities for exploring emerging concepts and relationships. Sampling continues until the study achieves theoretical saturation—the point at which additional data is no longer adding to the concepts and relationships being developed. Pace (2004) provides a more detailed description of the grounded theory research method.
Curiosity and goals play an important role in the flow experiences of Web users (see boxes 1 and 3 in Figure 1). During this study, informants reported engaging in two general types of navigation behaviour: a directed searching mode in which one is motivated to find a particular piece of information, and an exploratory browsing mode that is characterised by diffuse motives such as passing time or seeking stimulation. Directed searching and exploratory browsing are not dichotomous forms of navigation behaviour. On the contrary, they are closely interrelated. Web users move back and forth between the two modes, often many times within the same session.
Web users have a clearly defined goal while engaged in directed searching, and a poorly defined goal while engaged in exploratory browsing, but the fundamental goal is the same in each case—finding some item of interest within the shortest time possible. The item of interest may be as specific as the answer to a particular question or as vague as somebody's definition of a 'cool site'. The item of interest need not have broad appeal, but it must be of interest to the individual. Informant 4 plainly made this point when he said, 'I'm searching on media studies of Zimbabwe. It's probably uninteresting to you, but to me it's interesting'.
Berlyne (1960) proposed a categorization of different types of curiosity that is relevant to this study—the distinction between specific and diversive curiosity. Specific curiosity is the desire for a particular piece of information, as typified by an attempt to solve a problem or puzzle. Diversive curiosity is a more general seeking of stimulation or novelty, as typified by a bored television viewer flipping between channels. In the context of information-seeking, specific curiosity corresponds to well-defined goals and directed searching, while diversive curiosity corresponds to ill-defined goals and exploratory browsing (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. The relationship between curiosity, goals and navigation behaviour.
The following comment from Informant 12 provides an example of specific curiosity leading to a well-defined goal and directed searching:
Sometimes you're at work and you get a problem. You basically don't get time to fix it at work. So you come home, you do a bit of research on why it's happening, what the fixes are, and stuff like that. That can be pretty time-consuming.
The following comment from Informant 9 provides an example of diversive curiosity leading to an ill-defined goal and exploratory browsing:
I'm a bit of a magazine addict, and I often look at magazine sites … like, say the Cosmo site … Sometimes if I'm bored at work I might go there and have a look.
Web designers can encourage flow experiences by trying to cater to either the specific or diversive curiosity of potential visitors. For example, Informant 9 mentioned that some women's print magazines try to arouse the curiosity of their readers by publishing a password that provides access to a 'sealed section' on the magazine's Web site:
… if you buy the magazine it has a secret word and you can get into a sealed section, which I haven't ever done because I don't normally buy the magazine. But I've been to the site of this magazine and it says, 'Enter the password and you can see whatever'.
This marketing strategy encourages readers of the print magazine to visit the Web site to see the hidden content, and it encourages Web site visitors to purchase the magazine to obtain the password.
Like curiosity, time urgency plays an important role in the flow experiences of Web users (see box 2 in Figure 1). Recall that a Web user's information-seeking goal typically has two parts: (1) finding an item of interest; and (2) doing so quickly. The first part of this goal arises from curiosity or interest in a particular topic, and the second part arises from a sense of time urgency.
All informants in this study expressed a sense of time urgency when describing their information-seeking activities. Even when browsing for leisure, they had no desire to waste time on pages that were of little interest to them. Consider the following comment from Informant 7 as an example:
As I've got older I've just been aware of how important time is. So to me, if I look at a page, and if I can't identify within a second that I don't think it's useful … If I can't identify quickly that it's not what I want, then to me I sort of think, 'I'm not going to waste any more time on this because time is of the essence. Let's go to the next thing'. And spending an extra twenty seconds on one page to totally prove that this wasn't what I want, was twenty seconds that I could have spent doing something else.
Informants revealed their sense of time urgency in different ways: consciously setting a limit on the time they would devote to a search; employing a multi-window browsing strategy; selecting the first results returned by a search engine rather than inspecting others for relevance; losing patience with slow downloads and splash screens; scanning text rather than reading it word for word; and spending time at the first relevant site they found even when they suspected that better sites might exist.
Making progress toward an information-seeking goal is a necessary prerequisite for a flow experience, and this includes finding the item of interest within an acceptable time period (see boxes 10 and 15 in Figure 1). When a Web user fails to make progress toward attaining his or her information-seeking goal, the experience becomes frustrating, either because the item of interest cannot be found or because the search is taking too much time (see boxes 11 and 14 in Figure 1). It is impossible to specify precisely the point at which a feeling of failure or frustration sets in during a fruitless searching or browsing activity, because it depends on the user's sense of time urgency. For example, Informant 8 said that in some circumstances he can spend 'a good fifteen or twenty minutes searching for something' before the search 'starts to get annoying'. A different user searching for a different topic under different circumstances might have a very different tolerance level.
Web designers can accommodate their users' need for speed by avoiding interface design elements that are unnecessarily time-consuming. Optimising navigation speed is an underlying principle of many common usability principles such as: minimising file sizes with the aim of reducing download times; avoiding splash screens or providing an option for dismissing them quickly; organising content in a manner that is accessible in a minimal number of steps or clicks; using a consistent page layout to save users from having to familiarise themselves with a new layout every time they move to a new page; and presenting text in a manner that is easy to scan, rather than read word for word.
Web users face certain mental challenges as they pursue their information-seeking goals (see box 6 in Figure 1). Challenges that were identified by the informants in this study included: negotiating a vast, constantly changing, uncharted information space; selecting suitable key words for a search engine query; using the correct syntax for a search engine query; distinguishing relevant links from irrelevant links; dealing with a large collection of potentially relevant links; scanning a page for relevant information; and understanding the content and non-linear structure of a Web site.
These challenges play a major role in focusing attention on the task at hand, and some of them can be influenced by the decisions of Web designers. To improve the experiences of users, designers must ensure that the challenges presented by a site are at an appropriate level for the site's target audience (see box 9 in Figure 1).
To illustrate this idea, one of the challenges mentioned above is understanding the content and non-linear structure of a Web site. Web designers can help users to successfully meet this challenge by providing a clear place to latch onto the content of a site, and by providing guidance in how to navigate through it. When a site contains difficult content, the designer needs to ensure that each new concept that is presented is within easy reach of a concept the user has already understood. A site's content and structure should be challenging enough to hold the attention of the target audience, but not so challenging that it frustrates them.
Earlier in this paper, it was mentioned that making progress toward a successful outcome is a necessary condition for experiencing flow during information-seeking activities. Another essential condition is focused attention on the task at hand (see box 13 in Figure 1). Informant 1 described flow this way: 'It's a total concentration experience. You're so interested in doing what it is you're doing that nothing's interrupting you'.
The higher-than-average challenges mentioned in the previous section play a significant role in focusing attention on the task at hand. Interesting content and links that are relevant to the user's current information-seeking goal also help to maintain focused attention (see box 8 in Figure 1).
It is difficult to be precise about what is meant by the term 'relevant' when referring to content and links that are relevant to a Web user's goal. Celsi and Olson (1988, p. 211) suggest that 'a concept is personally relevant to the extent that consumers perceive it to be self-related or in some way instrumental in achieving their personal goals and values'. Greisdorf (2000, p. 68) recommends that when considering relevance, one should think, not in terms of the simple presence or absence of relevance, but in terms of degrees of relevance:
While the construct of black versus white is composed of mutually exclusive alternatives (just as relevant versus irrelevant is so composed), this does not preclude the use of the construct in a relativistic manner. Thus more grayness versus less grayness as a further abstraction of the construct black versus white is equivalent to partially relevant versus partially not relevant in relation to the construct of relevant versus irrelevant (not relevant).
Just as it is difficult to define 'relevance', it is difficult to be precise about the meaning of the term 'interesting' when referring to interesting content and links. Informants in this study suggested several reasons why they find certain content interesting, besides relevance to their current information-seeking goal. Congruence with personal interests and novelty were two key factors that informants mentioned. Content properties such as credibility, correctness, currency, ease of understanding, rarity, emotional impact and aesthetic appeal also seem to be influential in maintaining a user's attention under some circumstances. Web designers who wish to make their sites more interesting can assess their content against these criteria.
Interestingly, Lang (2000, pp. 48-49) identifies information that is relevant to the goals and interests of the individual and information that is novel or unexpected as two major types of stimuli that are likely to attract attention in her limited capacity information-processing model of television viewing:
Two major types of stimuli activate automatic selection processes: (a) information that is relevant to the goals and needs of the individual, and (b) information that represents change or an unexpected occurrence in the environment (Graham, 1997; Ohman, 1997). Automatic selection processes that are related to individual goals and relevance will vary across situations, cultures, and individuals. On the other hand, automatic selection processes related to stimulus characteristics, such as novelty, change, and intensity, are likely to be the same across individuals within a culture, though the standards of what is novel may vary from culture to culture.
Getting sidetracked can effectively prolong a Web user's flow experience. This paper uses the expression 'getting sidetracked' to describe occasions when a Web user engaged in an information-seeking activity decides to pursue a different goal because his or her curiosity is aroused by interesting content or links that are not directly relevant to the task at hand (see boxes 8 and 1 in Figure 1). Consider the following comment from Informant 12 as an example:
I go to a couple of sites that give you the latest happenings in say, for my example, the Linux operating system. And sometimes down the side they'll have the latest news. You see that and you think, 'Oh that's interesting'. Click on that, and it leads to something else, and you end up totally way off what you started on.
Getting sidetracked does not necessarily disrupt a flow experience. When Web users are sidetracked, their fundamental goal of finding an item of interest in the shortest time possible remains unchanged; it is only the item of interest that changes. The user may move seamlessly from one phase of the flow experience to another.
Web designers who wish to hold users at their sites for as long as possible can consider increasing opportunities for getting sidetracked by selectively adding links to other content within the site that is likely to appeal to users. The recommendation services used by sites like Amazon.com [HREF3] illustrate the application of this principle. Amazon attempts to ascertain the interests of its customers by examining the products they search for, view, purchase and rate. By comparing the activities of customers with similar profiles, the site's recommendation system is able to identify products that may be of interest to specific customers. Amazon's personalised pages present these recommendations in the form of links to product pages with labels like 'Customers who bought items in your recent history also bought such-and-such'.
A distracting interface can disrupt a Web user's flow experience (see boxes 4 and 12 in Figure 1). Ideally, interaction with a Web interface should require minimal attention, thereby freeing the user to concentrate on the task at hand. A poorly designed interface that demands an excessive amount of attention can terminate a flow experience. Consider the following comment from Informant 1 as an example:
… as soon as you start hitting a site where you start to think, 'Where the hell have they hidden this?' it [flow] just goes out the window 'cause you're not thinking about what you're doing any more … there's something wrong … the navigation isn't intuitive … I think it [flow] only happens … when everything's been done right, and it's easy to find, and you're concentrating on what you're doing instead of being distracted all the time. As soon as you're distracted, you come back to reality. I find that if you can't figure out how to get there, it's back to reality, and you think, 'Oh well. I should be doing something else at any rate'.
The study's informants mentioned several examples of interface design elements that interfered with their flow experiences by diverting attention from the task at hand. These elements included lengthy response times, disorganized content, inconsistent navigation cues, poorly structured page layout, inappropriate use of colour, stale links, ambiguous link labels, and pop-up advertisements.
Consider just one of these examples—the pop-up advertisement. Asaravala (2003) reports that pop-up advertisements are popular with advertisers because their average click-through rates (6.5%) are considerably higher than those of traditional banner advertisements (0.3%). However, if pop-up advertisements are detrimental to the flow experiences of Web users, then they are likely to have a similarly detrimental effect on the amount of time that people spend on the host Web site. When considered in this light, site owners may wish to examine the impact that pop-up advertisements have on the attractiveness and long-term viability of their sites.
Csikszentmihalyi (1990, pp. 67-69) describes flow activities as 'autotelic', meaning that they are intrinsically rewarding or worth doing for their own sake. His research suggests that 'the reason we enjoy a particular activity is not because such pleasure has been previously programmed in our nervous system, but because of something discovered as a result of interaction' (Csikszentmihalyi 1993, p. 189). This relationship between enjoyment and discovery was clearly evident in the informants' comments in this study (see boxes 15 and 16 in Figure 1). Consider the following comment from Informant 1 as an example:
It's like going to somewhere new. You're always learning something. You're always finding something. And you don't know what it is you're going to find. There's so much out there that you'll go there one day and then you'll come back, and you'll actually end up on a different path and finding something different. So it's investigation of the unknown really …
It's learning something, and learning something new. I think it's like travelling to a new place, you know. When you travel to somewhere for the first time it's always different. It's always better than the second time because the first time is new, it's fresh.
Closely related to the notion of discovery is that of surprise. Laurel (1992, p. 90) points out that when we have no particular expectations, discovering new information is a relatively unremarkable experience. But 'discovery becomes more interesting when the new information is not what we might have expected … in other words it is a surprise'. Surprises in real life can be nasty as often as they are pleasant, but within the controlled environment of the Web they can be designed to always be pleasurable and safe from real-world consequences (Laurel 1992, p. 91).
Web designers may be able to enhance the joy of discovery that users experience during flow by building pleasant surprises into their sites. Consider the following comment from Informant 5 as an example of the surprises provided by the Sportsgirl Web site [HREF4]:
… to find like free SMSs for your mobile phone and also the funny pictures there for you to have a look at—that was a total surprise. You wouldn't think that had anything to do with a clothing store Web site … that was kind of a nice surprise. It really kept you in that site for a lot longer. 'Cause I think if they didn't have stuff like that, you would have had a look, had a look at the catalogue, maybe subscribe for a catalogue to be sent to your home address, and then you would have left. But because they had all of these extra things, I think it really did keep you in that site a lot longer. And you did keep reverting back to the clothing aspect of it as well. So I think it was well done.
This paper has presented seven suggestions for creating Web sites that encourage flow experiences, or at least minimise obstructions that prevent the experience from occurring. These suggestions include: exploiting curiosity; being conscious of time urgency; matching challenges to the skills of users; focusing attention with relevant, interesting content; prolonging flow with sidetracks; avoiding distracting interface elements; and enhancing discovery with surprise.
Some of these suggestions closely resemble the traditional advice of usability experts, highlighting the value of those design principles. Other suggestions call on designers to take a more holistic approach to understanding the experiences of Web users, drawing on concepts such as enjoyment, frustration, curiosity, time urgency, challenge, discovery, and surprise.
Traditionally, researchers in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) have focused their efforts on making software easier to use, but many scholars are dissatisfied with the limitations of usability-based approaches (Cloninger 2002; Jordan 2000; Lenker 2002; Marcus 2002; Monk et al. 2002; Norman 2002; Shedroff 2001). As Jordan (2000, p. 7) notes, traditional human factors tend to view people as 'little more than cognitive and physical processors'.
Flow theory has the potential to help HCI move beyond traditional usability-based approaches and into the realm of affective computing, which Picard (1997) defines as 'computing that relates to, arises from, and deliberately influences emotion'. The ability to consider affective factors in a human-computer context will be a significant advancement for the field of HCI.
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Steven Pace © 2004. The author assigns to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author also grants a non-exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the conference papers and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web.