A Cross-Cultural Study of Flow Experience in the IT Environment: The Beginning

摘要

Row (optimal) experience is being widely investigated in the IT environments: in human-computer interaction, computer-mediated communication and exploratory behaviour, consumer and marketing applications, educational practice, playing computer, video and online games, psychological rehabilitation of the disabled, web usability testing, etc. Though a universal experience, flow can be expected to be culture specific and culture dependent. Optimal experience has only rarely been studied from a cross-cultural perspective, mainly in the field of gaming activities. An overview of the earliest works in the field is presented, as well as empirical evidences of a study referring to the flow experience and interaction patterns inherent to the samples of Russian and French online players.