Flow, the secret to happiness is an amazing TED Talk that I highly recommend watching. It describes an idea that concentration under the right conditions can lead the body into a feeling of outside that of everyday reality.

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks, “What makes a life worth living?” Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of “flow.” — TED.com

Mihaly says that people can compute about 110 bytes of information per second. He backs this statement up by elaborating and saying that on average for an individual to understand what he was saying on stage it would require about 60 bytes of information to be processed per second. That’s why it’s hard for people to understand two conversations simultaneously but easy to hear and distinguish between them.

How does this relate to user experience design and designing for experiences?

That’s a great question, if you have stuck around because you are wondering how the dots will connect, awesome! If you already know how the dots connect, find me on Twitter and let’s chat!

The idea of flow relates to user experience design because it compliments the idea of designing for context.

People can be so concentrated on one thing that the subtle background processes that we usually are slightly aware of seem to fade away. It is possible for people to be so enthralled in what they are doing that they forget about the idea of existence, and their consciousness can’t even begin to think about the fact that it has an identity. People often define this feeling as “time flies”. It happens when hours feel like minutes; when what you’re doing becomes the only cognitively aware state of reality.

Design for that reality.

Aid the user to an ecstatic state of interaction where their current actions are the only perceivable state of reality. It may sound strange, or even an impossible task but it’s not. It happens everyday to hundreds of millions if not billions of people, including yourself.

If you’re wondering how this is possible, it’s easy. Did you forget about the idea of time while reading this article, or rather did you forget about the responsibilities of your life? This happens multiple times a day when we use really well designed products.

The fact of the matter is that people can experience a mental state where existence is suspended. You can aid a user in the discovery of that mental state and help them into a new temporary state of reality by designing with flow and context in mind.

** As a designer we have a great deal of power. While that may be the designer ego speaking, we really do have a huge responsibility to design experiences ethically, and use patterns that aren’t harmful to the user. I personally don’t think that “flow experience” as Mihaly describes it is a dark pattern, but there is a time and a place for it. Context is critical.

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