In this section, I identify the different disciplines that will be relevant for my research. Not necessarily looking for answers within these disciplines at this stage, I’m focusing on visualizing the scope of my research. Although this list will definitely be growing over time, this is where I’m starting.
On the humanistic side, psychology will help me understand the social dynamics between participants, thus is very important for this research. There is a vast body of research around HCI (Human Computer interaction), a subset of psychology. This discipline is relevant because it deals with how humans interact with artificial systems, and what are the psychological aspects within that interaction. CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work), an even more specific area of HCI, studies how people interact collaboratively through computer-mediated systems. CSCW addresses the concerns and rules for designing a system to generate the desired behaviors.
On the design realm, looking into game design, software and musical instruments design will help understand the variables for designing a system that deals, at the same time, with all of their concerns. On the technical side, spatial design and sound design will play their role in determining the kind of space and sound conditions to support the experience. As I could realize when testing Trinidad, the context is very important as it influences on people’s predisposition to behavioral changes. Just imagine a dance club with bright, fluorescent white lights, it simply wouldn’t work.
At this stage of research, I am focusing more on the humanistic side. It makes sense to me that a good first step is understanding how people operate in experiences that require collaboration. What are the conditions needed to generate engagement with an activity? What influences the communication between participants? How does flow works?
In The Psychology of Happiness [1], Michael Argyle refers to a chart from the American Psychological Association, that plots the classification of moods. It maps all the adjectives associated to moods into a positive and negative scale, crossing the dimensions of pleasant-unpleasant and arousal-sleep. This maps broadens the scope of what I was considering a “fun” experience, breaking it down into more specific states. There are different kinds of pleasurable experiences, we sometimes experience as much pleasure when staring at a sunset in a calm beach as we do when playing Black Jack at the casino. Same feeling, but shaped in an entirely different way. This brings me to the question: What kind of pleasurable experience I’m looking for? Is it going to be something that makes you feel relaxed or something that makes you feel euphoric? Both sides are interesting, but it is important to notice that aiming to one side or the other changes everything. I don’t have the answer at this point yet, but having this in mind is helpful to define an initial area to explore through prototyping.
I also did further research about the state of flow. According to Csikszentmihalyi [2], this state can be visualized as a channel that arises when skills and challenges are properly balanced.
“ In our studies, we found that every flow activity, whether it involved competition, chance, or any other dimension of experience, had this in common: It provided a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting the person into a new reality. It pushed the person to higher levels of performance, and led to previously undreamed-of states of consciousness. In short, it transformed the self by making it more complex. In this growth of the self lies the key to flow activities.” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 72-77)
Taking these ideas from different studies, mostly from Csikszentmihalyi, it can be said that there are four conditions for systems to facilitate flow:
- Contain rules that require the learning of skills
- Set up goals
- Provide feedback
- Make control possible
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[1] Argyle, Michael. The Psychology of Happiness. New York: Methuen&Co.,1987.
[2] Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.