Flow in web design by Scott Berkun
This article was very straight forward. It talks about an interesting concept called flow. This term was coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow can be described as being at the top of your game when doing something creative. It can also happen during more mundane tasks.
Flow should be used when designing web pages. Berkun didn’t have any substantial ways to tap into this creative peak in this article. He did have some good questions to ask regarding audience analysis. Berkun asks us to think about why a visitor to our website would be coming there. He asked us to make a list of the tasks a user is going to perform at the site, and prioritize that list. Once the list is created, design the site around the most important elements.
There was a useful analogy in the article regarding a rental car. The user knows they are in the correct location, but cannot find a keyhole to start the car. Berkun asks us to question how we get from one step to another, and what tools are there if we get lost along the way. I have often found websites that are useful, but I have problems gleaning the pertinent information. How many times have you tried to use Google as a research tool, and find a promising link, only to find that you have to sift through pages of information to find the matching text? I know that I have become frustrated, not only with Google, but with research databases as well, when searching for pertinent information.
Berkun encourages us to learn Microsoft’s Visual Studio (indirectly), but says that once the tool is learned, the effect on the end user can be helpful. Through intuitive design, the user will be able to accomplish the tasks that they set out to do in an efficient manner.
I found this article pretty lack-luster. I didn’t feel like it gave me anything to sink my teeth into. I could tell that Berkun really liked the concept of flow, and the idea intrigues me, but there are no references to how one can tap into this creative power to help you sync with your end users. Is it even possible to create a common occurance through print?
There is reference to usability testing, but this article seemed to be trying to tell me how to do something he didn’t know how to do. I felt like if I read the book on flow, I would have learned more from this article, but without the background, I came up short with palpable tasks that help design a better document.
Am I the only one who thought this was more of a sales pitch for Microsoft Visual Studio and the book Flow?
John
6 comments:
You know I agree with you that the Mircosoft name dropping was distracting and didn't feel coincidental.
I was very intrigued by the concept of flow particularly since, in my mind, that is one of the big things we are in the class to learn. This class is about getting/mastering the tools needed to create flow within our own online designs. Also it definitely applies to more than just this class. The best GM I've ever played under had flow and I've always saught to emulation him in creating a world for player characters to explore without forcing a plot down their throats.
Still as for the article itself, this guy seemed to stand on the shoulders of giants but he didn't see much for the view. In better words, he took the idea of a better author, wrote an article applying that idea to web design without adding much of his own to the idea itself. I have no idea what he had to say the article. It feels like he is paraphrasing. It doesn't have enough detail the specifics of applying "flow" to web design to justify its exsistence as a piece of independent work. He should have just mentioned the book flow as an excellent design resource that could be applied to the web and left it at that.
Maybe if Berkun just changed the title of his article, I would have been more accepting of it. Since flow isn't really addressed, that should be removed from the title.
I at least appreciated his take on the Web page, putting the user experience at the forefront of all design and construction. There are Web pages (many blogs especially) that are obviously designed with the comfort of the author in mind.
Having just read comments in response to the Porter piece that claimed it was too long and involved, it's interesting to come here and see comments that say this piece wasn't long and involved enough. It seems like there's space for summaries and extensive analyses both, yes?
I was intrigued by this article mainly because it invoked the concept of audience repeatedly. What do we want our audiences to do/gain from our sites? This is a notoriously tricky and abstract concept: authors don't usually have the power to control their audiences, yet we throw the word around as if an audience was an a knowable, manageable entity.
How will our concept of audience affect our own site designs?
I think most people begin writing a document (print or web-based) with someone else in mind, but they fall into a rut of writing it for themselves. They have done research, and want to get all the relevant information into a coherent argument. I know that I tend to take my knowledge for granted when writing an article. There are gaps that I stumble upon when revising, and once a document is fully completed, I can hand it to someone else to look at, and find that I have left out something else in its entirity. We tend to generalize other's human experiences with our own, and make similar connections, whether that is true or not.
I would like to say that I am reminded by this article not directly of what it has to say, but the concept of the word "flow," as being a word that has been given a new/additional meaning. We discuss the effects of digital literature on our writing. Here is a prime example of the effects of digital literature not just on our writing, but on language in general. I believe that we could come up with a number of words that have either been recently adopted, or recently altered or added to in definition. This leads me to suggest that as our ability to communicate increases, so to does the rate of change in our language. Feel free to agree or disagree.
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