The idea from this week's reading that I will be responding to is Design Principle 6.14:

Principle 6.14: Induce and Harness Flow

I wanted to unpack this principle by analyzing the times and situations in which I have found myself in a flow state in order to see what lessons can be learned about the conditions necessary to engender that experience through design.

I'm not sure exactly when I learned about the concept of flow, but I can recall being deeply invested in and disappointed by my inability to achieve a similar principle touted by the great bassist Victor Wooten as it related to my musical hobbies. In a video I found online, Victor discussed the four stages of musical development along two axes: Unconscious Unknowing -> Conscious Unknowing -> Conscious Knowing -> Unconcious Knowing. This last stage was something to strive for - an ability for music to just "flow" without conscious thought from the player, preconditioned on such a deep knowledge of the instrument as to remove the need for active mental processing. It's an idea that describes precisely what I hoped to achieve, but have still yet to, as a musician.

Fortunately in the intervening years, I have found two activities that I am actually able to achieve a flow state in: (Usually design-focused) coding and music production. The reason I qualify the type of coding is that as an AI student, I have to write some teeth-pulling code at times, but we'll ignore that in the interest of our broader point here :) Whenever I get going on either of these tasks, it's like I've suddenly become a steam engine roaring down the tracks - moving at seemingly-effortless breakneck speed and impossible to stop (evidenced by the times I have to be literally shouted at to get my attention back to reality). I think one of the main things I've observed about these experiences is that they are intensely "of the present" - when I'm in a flow state, I don't have to worry about planning a sequence of steps to get from point A to point B. I'm able to simply evaluate the current output of the system, and know what needs to be done next. This requires a certain level of self-assuredness in ones abilities to meet challenges as they arise, which is where I think a certain level of mastery of a skill comes into the equation. When you're able to hit this kind of stride, the whole world melts away, and its just you and the task at hand in a rapidly iterating feedback loop.

Based on my observations above, I think the core tenet that needs to be kept in mind when attempting to build flow experiences through design is a focusing of energy and attention to the immediate present. Fortunately, as designers, we can help to inspire the level of self-assuredness needed to suppress strategic thinking by designing our challenges to meet the level of skill, removing the need for a general level of mastery and helping to make flow experiences that are widely accessible. I know I feel on top of the world when I hit a stride, so as a designer, I want to make others feel that way too.