Friction 22 items

Last updated: Aug 6, 2025

"Goal is the removal of friction, not gamification" — Lauren Cason on her iterations through AR

Joe Norman on Twitter: "Having to get on a ship to cross on ocean was probably a good amount of friction / Twitter"

Having to get on a ship to cross on ocean was probably a good amount of friction

Opinion | The Tyranny of Convenience (Published 2018)

All the personal tasks in our lives are being made easier. But at what cost?

when trolls flood lives with messages: here a sort of penalizing? where we could instead use more slowness. slowness v. lagging

The Fiction of No Friction

Thoughts on the future of human-centered design

Little UX frictions like this are really, really smart and potentially important. I hope @twitter keeps them post election. pic.twitter.com/9i15bzS2Bb

Text me back: How communicative friction explains the way we engage

Craig Mod op Twitter: "@paulg adding "friction" seems like it should be more effective and more trivial to implement than blanket fact checking; i.e., an account is only allowed to tweet five times a day, retweet twice, etc; the problem seems to be less fact checking, more rate of spread" / Twitter

But, an even bigger consideration is that of design friction. Friction is anything that prevents users from accomplishing their goals or getting things done as quickly as possible. It is usually the opposite of being intuitive or effortless. However, it doesn’t mean that it’s always bad for users. Are messaging apps supposed to hoist the sustainability flag? iMessage and WhatsApp are all about seamless messaging. Sending a picture just works. Adding an extra interaction to stimulate sustainability adds an 'unnecessary' friction to that experience. But maybe this 'friction in the experience' is exactly what consumers need.

Can we create a product that stimulates us to do things actively? Passive research: reading and collecting (easy) Active research: writing, creating and exploratory making (hard) Adding friction to a product experience to stimulate certain behavior.

Opinion | The Tyranny of Convenience

Tim Wu Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today. As a driver of human decisions, it may not offer the illicit thrill of Freud's unconscious sexual desires or the mathematical elegance of the economist's incentives. Convenience is boring. But boring is not the same thing as trivial.

Meaningful Friction

14 blocks

Designing Friction For A Better User Experience - Smashing Magazine

In experience design, friction is usually the opposite of being intuitive or effortless. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s always bad for the users. In this article, you’ll learn when and how friction can be an efficient tool to actually design better experiences.

The Internet Needs More Friction

Friction

I can't be the only one struck by the commonalities between building sustainable businesses on the app store and NSA spying. Or my moving to Taiwan. (Forgive me one more meta-ish post; I'm still a bit jet-lagged). First the app store: the inability to monetize existing customers is a primary reason why it's difficult to build a sustainable business on apps alone.

Why we need friction in user experience – Wolff Olins

Ease, speed and the removal of friction are the rallying cries of user experience and service designers the world over. And though this may be a powerful method for making easy to use products, the relentless focus has come at a price to the ecosystems it serves.

How Social Media Shortens Your Life

Ali Abouelatta on Twitter