Approaching Theory of Flow to Virtual Environments and its application. Experimenting with LEGO? Serious Play? framework

?Index:

What means Flow?

The 8 Characteristics of Flow

The Right Level of Difficulty in Virtual Environments of Interaction

Online Flow in depth: Peak Experience and Peak Performance

State of the Art. Proposed succesful roadmaps for virtual experiences

Virtual experience of Flow applied in LEGO? Serious Play? workshops

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What means Flow?

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1975, 1988), flow is a "crucial component of enjoyment" and is "the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement". In a flow state, the consumers perceive an effortless action, loss of time and a sense that the experience stands out as being exceptional compared with daily activities (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997).

An excellent reflection of Theory of Flow, we can read it at LEGO? Serious Play? Open Source document: “The theory of Flow, states that individuals gain most from a learning or developmental process when they are committed to and enjoy the process. It is imperative for a participant’s engagement in a developmental process that they experience ‘optimum stretch’ in terms of cognitive and emotional involvement – in other words, that their skills and resources are suitably challenged. Flow theory states that if a developmental process is not enough of a challenge, the individual gets bored and the learning curve tails off.

By contrast, if individuals are presented with too difficult a challenge, they become anxious, have dif culty memorizing, and lose grasp of the situation, which also resultsin a falling learning curve. Humans feel good and develop best, and therefore learn the most, when they are presented with assignments that challenge them optimally – neither too little, nor too much…"

The 8 Characteristics of Flow

Csikszentmihalyi describes eight characteristics of flow:

• Complete concentration on the task
• Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback
• Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down)
• The experience is intrinsically rewarding
• Effortlessness and ease
• There is a balance between challenge and skills
• Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination
• There is a feeling of control over the task

The Right Level of Difficulty in Virtual Environments of Interaction

The interesting question in these turbulent moments is, how to optimize the flow experience in our virtual teaching activities?

Getting into a state of flow requires an activity meet three conditions, that we need to apply in virtual environments:

1     There must be a clear set of goals

2     It must have the right level of difficulty for the person's skill level

3     It must have clear and immediate feedback that lets the person adjust to improve their performance.

Online Flow in depth: Peak Experience and Peak Performance

Over the time, researchers in psychology have developed several concepts that are similar with flow because they can be considered optimal experiences. In this section we compare and contrast two of those concepts: peak experience and peak performance.

On one hand, peak experience is "a generalization for the best moments of the human being, for the happiest moments of life, for experiences of ecstasy, rapture, bliss, of the greatest joy" (Maslow, 1971).

The difference between flow and peak experience is that both may involve high levels of enjoyment. Peak experiences differ from flow experiences in which ‘the former is "all or nothing" while the latter varies in intensity’ (Walker et al., 1998, p. 455).

On the other hand, peak performance is "superior use of human potential" and "it refers to the full use of human power, whether if that will be physical strength in a crisis, creative expression through an artistic endeavour, intellectual mastery of a problem, or another experience that significantly taps human potential (Privette, 1983).

An important point to reflect as facilitators is that flow involves both enjoyment and performance, but is not defined by their level of intensity.

Later studies from Hoffman and Novak (1996) extended the applicability of flow theory in online environments, such as the World Wide Web, and defined flow as:

the state occurring during network navigation which is:

1.    characterized by a seamless sequence of responses facilitated by machine interactivity

2.    intrinsically enjoyable

3.    accompanied by a loss of self-consciousness

4.    self-reinforcing.

These four definitions of Flow in virtual enviroments, on my understanding must be addresed to obtain enough enjoyment ans performance for our virtual attendants

State of the Art. Proposed succesful roadmaps for virtual experiences

In 2004, Skadberg and Kimmel proposed a flow model to predict the level of flow for a tourism website, that has interesting items to be discussed.

The user's domain knowledge represents user’s skill and the content of the Web pages represents the challenge. The third direct antecedent of flow is telepresence, which is influenced by site attractiveness and interactivity, the latter is further influenced by speed and ease of use. Flow is measured by time distortion and enjoyment. The consequence of flow is increased learning, which impacts attitude and behavior.

This flow model is important because it can be used by facilitators in order to create fun virtual experiences, where the designed flow involves both enjoyment and performance.

I really appreciate the focus of Chen (2000). He finds empirical evidence for a correlation between a Web user’s flow experience and ten flow dimensions originally proposed by Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Below you have a brief summary of his point of view with the following image.

Virtual experience of Flow applied in LEGO? Serious Play? workshops

As we can read at LEGO? Serious Play? Open Source document: “ The most important time to ensure flow is when a group of people begin learning the LEGO? SERIOUS PLAY? process, and the facilitator does this by following the LEGO? SERIOUS PLAY? skills building process and principles….”

1. The three basic phases of the process.

2. The Etiquette.

3. Use of LEGO bricks as personal metaphors.

4. The use of the LEGO models to share thoughts and present stories.

5. The function of the models and stories as implements in active listening and constructive dialogue.

Following in depth the Chen focus in order to experiment LEGO? Serious Play? online experiences, I use the following experimental scheme adapted from Chen's roadmap (2000); that it allow me to explore and adapt the available tech tools and methods for a better enjoyment and performance in this format of LEGO? Serious Play? experiences in the online world.

Legend:

1. Black balls address to LSP principles
2. Areas in yellow must be managed with current online participative technologies, suc as: Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google applications, .....
3. LSP Facilitator must control the transition zones: blue, red, green in order to create a positive atmosphere of work.

For more information about my experiences, do not hesitate contact me.

Sources:

LEGO ? Serious Play? Open Source

Theory of Flow: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow Theory and Online Marketing Outcomes: a Critical Literature Review Daniel Rare Obada - Elsevier- 2013