Designing Web Interfaces

Part III. Stay on the Page

Flow

In the book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, published by Harper Perennial, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes the state of “optimal experience” as the times when people enter a state of concentration so focused it creates a state of effortless control. Athletes may enter into flow and report the feeling of unself-consciousness as well as rising to the peak of their abilities. Flow, however, can be broken by a sudden awareness of the surroundings or by some interruption that happens to come along.

Unfortunately, users of our web applications rarely experience this level of happiness. In fact, the traditional web experience is punctuated with a page refresh each time the user chooses an action. It’s like watching a play where the curtain comes down between each line of dialogue. The page refresh creates an artificial break in the action—or a break in the user’s flow.

Change Blindness

The break can cause visual consequences as well. I recently took some of my children to the Exploratorium in San Francisco (a wonderful hands-on science museum for all ages). An exhibit that caught my eye was the one demonstrating change blindness.^[22] A large screen displayed an image of a store-front typical of those seen in most urban areas, complete with awning, windows, doors—all of a distinctive style. Then suddenly a new updated image of the store-front replaced the original one. The new image had a slight change from the original. However, try as I might ...