Slides of my talk at the UX India conference, held in Bangalore, at IIM Bangalore campus, October 24th-26th

1. DESIGN FOR
FLOW
@kshitiz #uxindia13
Talk delivered at UX India Conference,
October 25th, 2013

2. Currently I head :
INDIA STUDIO!
Otherwise I have a few startup initiatives

4. Origin of this term?

6. Marcus Arelius in his writings 'the Meditations’, wrote a lot about the
flow of thoughts and happiness and he concluded that "most things
flow naturally" and in his opinion it was better to "Go with the Flow"
than to try and change society.

7. Today we are going to speak about
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Hungarian, Professor of psychology

8. How do you say his name?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

9. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Me-high Chick-sent-me-high

10. FLOW
The psychology
of optimal
experience

11. His most famous work
FLOW
The psychology
of optimal
experience
Was done to study happiness in people

12. People who learn to control inner experience will be able
to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as
any of us can come to being happy.
- M Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 1990

13. Good UX à Happy people

14. Design for people, emotions, behaviors.
Do not design for technology

15. But its easier said than done…
So let us go a bit deeper into understanding this

16. What actually goes on in the human mind,
when we are looking at designing for happiness

17. Going from this

18. To this

19. Look into
a cognitive, psychological
&
behavioral understanding
of what builds a good UX

20. Our mental and emotional states
M Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow, 1997

21. These states are controlled by
CONSCIOUSNESS

22. What is CONSCIOUSNESS ?
These states are controlled by
CONSCIOUSNESS

23. CONSCIOUSNESS is a
Phenomenological construct

24. It is dependent on phenomena :
Subjective experiences of the individual

25. Order in the Consciousness à GOOD UX
Disorder in the Consciousness à BAD UX

26. Mastery of the Consciousness à Happiness
MASTERY OVER CONSCIOUSNESS à HAPPINESS

27. More than anything else, men and women seek happiness
- Socrates, 2300 years ago

28. Optimal experience
depends upon ability
to control what
happens in the
consciousness each
moment

29. How does Consciousness work?
How is it controlled?

30. CONSCIOUSNESS :
Where pain and pleasure both reside

31. Users actions are based on INSTINCT :
What we feel is right, the inner voice

32. Information theory helps
in understanding what
really happens in the
consciousness

33. What interests us, is how
sensory data (what we
experience through our
senses) are collected
processed, stored and
used

34. Consciousness is a place for ordered
information à Responds to subjectively
experienced reality

35. The consciousness processes
INFORMATION BITS

36. COGNITIVE LOAD : Too much information
to process à Leads to CHAOS

37. CHAOS creates DISCONTENT: facilitated
by chronic dissatisfaction and anxiety

38. OVERCOMING the anxiety :
RECLAIMING the experience

39. But not everything we are presented with, is
processed by the Consciousness

40. The processing of information by the
Consciousness is INTENTION

41. Our INTENTIONs decide the ATTENTION
spans and time we give to a task

42. But there are limits of Consciousness :
How much information bits can the human
mind (central nervous system) process ?

43. Shortest time it takes to
discriminate between one
set of information bit and
th of a
other is about 1/18
second

44. One can process upto 126
bits of information per
second
= 7560 bits per minute
= Almost half a million per hour
= 185 billion bits of information in a
lifetime *
* Assumption: Lifespan = 70years, and 16 hours or active waking time each days

45. 185 billion bits of information in a
lifetime !!!!
Seems a lot, but it is not!
To understand what the other person
is saying, 40 bits of information are
processed each second.

46. Information is processed by the consciousness
because we give it ATTENTION

47. ATTENTION is Psychic energy, that decides
what information bits need to be processed and
tells the consciousness what to do

48. The more you complicate the information,
the more difficulty the consciousness has in
processing it!

49. COMPLEXITY is a result of
differentiation and Integration
in Information.
Differentiation à
Move towards uniqueness
Integration à
Union of old vs new, other ideas,
preconceived impressions

50. COMPLEXITY à Disorder in Consciousness
We call it PSYCHIC ENTROPY

51. Removing Psychic Entropy in Consciousness,
is optimal experience and it leads to FLOW

52. DESIGNING FOR FLOW = BETTER UX

53. HOW ?

55. Takeaway #1
Think about the Consciousness
when you design

56. Takeaway #2
The goal is mastery of this
consciousness through design
decisions

57. Takeaway #3
How can you control the users
intentions? Design for it.

58. Takeaway #4
Think on how much attention
should be given to each task?

59. Takeaway #5
Think about Information Bits that
the consciousness is processing

60. Takeaway #6
Reduce cognitive load to remove
Chaos in consciousness

61. Takeaway #7
Avoid Complexity and reduce
Psychic entropy

62. Takeaway #8
Overcome anxiety of the customer!

63. Takeaway #9
Help them reclaim the experience

64. Takeaway #10
Spread Happiness J

65. THANK YOU!
Go with the flow!
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