What is flow?
Many of us may remember some experience where we were engaged in an activity, and in the blink of an eye it seemed as if hours had elapsed. This experience is referred to as flow, and a few years ago it was the subject of a lot of research that resulted in another, more descriptive term called 'optimal experience'. The reason why such a relatively strange human quality attracted enough attention to become the subject of research, is that such experiences are frequently remembered as “the best time of our life”. One of these experiments aimed to examine the different user experiences that facilitate the occurrence of flow, simply by asking research subjects to describe their flow experience. By analyzing the feedback they formulated the following qualities that are common to the flow experience. Challenge – The activity must be challenging, but not so much that it discourages people from participating. Skill – To complete the activity, a participant must use some kind o