Entry #2 It's all about the experience!

I want you to think about what is some highlights of your leisure activities you have been involved in? Was that memory of your experience something you did for the first time or after your gain skill? Was their challenge or risk involved? Who was there? What was it that stuck out in your mind to you?

My next topic of discussion is about what makes leisure activities worth participating in and how experience economy influences choices. Is the experience based solely on the money we spend or the experience we wish to gain? Research has shown that once to sale a product we must now sale the experience gained. If a company cannot sale the products uses and help the audience imagine the experience of the product then success of the product lowers. Today we will discuss what attracts the audience to that activity and how do you maintain that perceived experience once they are participating. To describe how this topic works I will be using the restaurant Dick's Last Resort in Las Vegas Nevada.

                                                                    

In the case of Dick's restaurant the theme of the experience they are selling to the customer is opposite of most restaurants out there. They want to talk back to, be sassy, yell, and name call the customer when providing service. The experience economy they are selling is you are here to be treated like you are bothering me and are not worth time. Many of you might be thinking what is the difference between Dick's and other restaurants that you have seen out there that provided a similar experience of high ting the negative cues? The difference with Dick's and other restaurants is that Dick's could be considered a non-family friendly environment. Some of the words used would make even a sailor would blush. The experience economy they are selling is unique by their use of adult content and border line excessively demeaning comments towards customers.

The question then becomes how did they sale the experience to the audience to make them remember and agree with the restaurants name "Dick's last resort"? Firstly, they greeted guest at the reservation station with a quick question and comment of "Have your ever been here before?" and "Here we server with attitude. Just the (number of people) of you huh" . After seating guest and dropping down menus the wait staff walks towards the table and proceeds to use general names later the name calling becomes specific to the guest. For example they might make a comment about they type of clothing, hair style, or facial expression you display and base a new "name" for the guest. During the course of the meal the wait staff will make an individualized hat out of paper, resembling the white top hats a teacher would place on disruptive student in the corner, and write moderately vulgar things on the hat for the customer to wear and keep as part of the memorabilia. When the wait staff makes eye contact with customers they give a sigh of annoyance and walk towards the table to check on the guest.

How does Dick's stimulate the senses to heighten the experience? Appearance, the restaurant decor resembles an run down shack. The tables are en-elongated wood picnic tables and the restaurant is decorated in money that wait staff has received over the years with comments, number, names, an such written on it. While the restaurant itself is clean the dark finishes make the restaurant look menacing. Classic rock music and 50's 60's songs and pictures transport guest to a different time or place then present day or even Vegas bling and lights. The female wait staff has their hair and make-up similar to pin-up models in classic movies.

As the experience comes to an end guest are directed towards the memorabilia station with shirts, cups, hats, pictures, and other assorted items to re-assert the experience in the future. They also have comment cards available for concerns next to a sign stating what the service should and should not be like. Overall the experience Dick's Last Resort restaurant presents is if you are in the mood to take verbal smacking and can laugh about how you never before paid to be treated like an annoyance, Dick's is the place for you.

Entry #1 That optimal point

In my previous post I discussed what is leisure, play, and recreation. To further that conversation I will discuss a particular theory to can connect play and experience in relation to the topic. 

Recently when discussing with colleagues and classmates about leisure studies the topic of Flow or "the zone" was brought up. Flow is that moment in time when the ability/skill of a person is equally balanced with challenge of an activity.  When I played competitive softball there were moments when I intrinsically moved to a play and made plays on instinct without a single thought. The concept of flow has been thoroughly researched by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as the point when the participant is at an optimal psychological state, a state of consciousness, immersion in the activity, concentrated focus, and a perceived optimal experience. In essence flow is experienced when a person maintains a loss of concentration of  outside distracts and concentrates purely on the activity in which they are in engaged in at that moment. If you have ever caught yourself say "I lost track of time" or "Time got away from me", more then likely you have experienced flow while actively participating in that given activity. 

With the explanation and examples presented one might wonder how do we determine when someone has reach that optimal point of skill and challenge creating "flow"? Firstly, taking from the conceptual definition of how flow can be experienced. I can narrow specific domains in which I can begin to create operational definitions that list variables to determine if someone has experienced flow. Possible variables included but are not limited to: awareness of sounds and movements not in the area of play, the amount of time required to preform an action, the amount of eye contact and or body language with other members involved, and overall satisfaction expressed by the participant(s). 

When determining a persons awareness of the surroundings not in the area of play we first must determine what is the area of play. For the purpose of this example the area of play is the marked or known area in which a person will be activity using for the given activity. For example the lines drawn a basketball gym floor is the area of play and the bleachers and benches for coaches and extra players is the outside information processed preventing flow. For our purpose a low level of interaction and reaction to the out of play area is one determining variable of being a state of flow. 

To determine the amount of to perform an action we can consider the pace and quick reactions of the participant(s). It takes about one to two more seconds to perform an action if thought is required instead of instinctively using automaticity to complete a task. When measuring this amount of time we can also look at the amount of eye contact or body language expressed between participants before and after an action is performed. Was there communication prior or was it spontaneous based on prior knowledge of patterns of the participant(s)? The lower amount of time to perform an action is a positive variable towards flow occurring. 

Lastly, a variable that will vary from participant but is still a factor to determine flow is the satisfaction of the participant. Satisfaction for this purpose is determined by the overall feeling of enjoyment and loss of time the participant experienced during the activity. A high rating of satisfaction and/or loss of time from the participant is a positive variable that flow had occurred. 

If all of the variables are met then based on my construct flow has been met for the given activity participant(s) engaged in. 

Overall flow is that perfect combination when skill level of the individual is proportionate to the challenge being presented. Flow is the occurrence of instinct presenting itself when trying to reach the goal presented by the challenge.  

Fun clip about the "the zone" flow

https://youtu.be/0vEIDij8Q9k

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en

Entry #practice

My name is Ms. Jackson and I have worked in the field of youth recreation for six years as a program implementer and creator. My responsibility were to create programs that not only had the youth activity involved but also provided a holistic perspective on life skills and decisions.

Leisure, Play? How can someone begin to separate these three things into different categories? Some would say that one or more interact with each other in every event we do in personal time. In the course of this reading we will narrow our understanding of each term definition before we address how an event can have multiple of these terms comprised together working in harmony forming leisure, recreation, or play.

When considering play, what might come to mind is children playing at a park or in the yard, laughing, cheering, and gleefully enjoying their time with each others. Consider play as being instinctual, built into our primal conditioning to participate in. Stuart Brown used the example cats when describing how play is essential for a holistic rounded life. "Play allows 'pretend' rehearsal for the challenges and ambiguities of life, a rehearsal in which life and death are not at stake." (Brown, 32) Brown found that play was not for practice in hunting but practice for social skills. The interaction of playful reenactments of situations and learning when conditions change is valuable skill to achieve a balanced life. 

The history of leisure  can be found in individual and group times when people had time to participate in activities that were not necessary to sustain life. They had the freedom to freely participate in organized, planned events outside of time preparing fields, shelter, food to maintain the basic necessities of life. In modern times we would consider this time to be vacations, overseas travel, and extravagant activities. The term conspicuous consumption has been used when describing the purchase of time and activities to represent a status in society.