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Why put usability first
In web design, when we think about flow we usually mean "task flows" and "flow charts" but there's a different kind of flow that you have to keep in mind. It's that impression of complete absorption when you're engaged in something you like to do and are not disrupted by anxiety or boredom due to tasks that are misdirecting, repetitive or overly taxing.
Flow, as a mental condition, was primarily proposed by psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and is described by a distorted sense of time, a low level of self-consciousness, and complete participation in the process at hand. Software engineers often experience it when they're writing code, gamers might experience it when playing Quake III, Christopher Cross felt it when he went sailing. For Web designers, it's exactly the feeling we hope to promote in the users of our site.
How do we design sites that inspire that feeling? First, it begins with a site that solves a challenging problem and is complex enough to require a certain degree of learning by people who use it. The goal should not certainly be to create a simple page. The goal should be to develop a site that feels intuitive to navigate no matter how complex it really is. But wait, you might be thinking, hasn't there been a usability movement in the design field in the last couple of years? Yes, but there's a learning curve for any site that seeks to solve a difficult task. We shouldn't mix simplicity with a desire to avoid excessive complexity.
The way to make the complicated feel painless is to design with flow in mind. By designing a page that is smooth and intuitive and inspires flow, you make people get familiar with it more quickly, lower the chance that existing users get bored your page and switch to another and produce users that recommend your page to other people. That results in more users, increased activity, and greater awareness of your site.
The first step in creating for flow is to determine clear goals for the users. It's vital to develop both an overarching goal along with smaller, staged goals. Goals help people understand what is their final destination and each step they'll take to arrive there.
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