Designing for Meaningful Collisions

Simon
Simon
Jul 27, 2017 · 6 min read

On average, adults make around 35,000 conscious decisions every day. To put this is perspective, research from Cornell University suggested that 226.7 of those daily decisions are made about food alone. This relentless decision-making always starts with the intent — what we want to happen — and ends with an action or the result. What happens in between intent and action is where we find friction.

Friction in User Experience

In the user experience, friction is defined as the interactions that inhibit people from intuitively and painlessly achieving their goals within a digital interface. This makes sense, because the path of least resistance is often preferable to the difficult, steep climb. People want fast results(Hyperbolic Discounting model) and the closer they are to achieving a desired result, the more motivated they become to achieve it (goal gradient effect)

To illustrate, let’s look at examples of friction in some familiar digital products, and common tasks we might perform whilst using them:

Something Sign-Up

A sign-up or onboarding process is a common and continual friction-fraught process

Part of the Nike App’s onboarding process

Etsy Checkout

Etsy’s App checkout process

How to Reduce Friction

Here are my five favourite methods for reducing friction in the user experience:

  1. Ask yourself: What is the minimum input I need from someone before they can see value in my offering? Give users only the information they need, when they need it, and nothing more. See the principles of progressive enhancement and progressive disclosure for more on this.. For example, if someone is able to use 90% of your product without turning on location services, don’t ask them to turn on location services until they actually need to use that 10% of your product.
  2. Remove clutter and unnecessary visuals. Busy interfaces are distracting and confusing. Instead, focus readers on the task at hand. Visuals can definitely help emphasize a message; just make sure they add to the experience rather than inhibit it.
  3. Use common patterns and build consistent interfaces. When designing mobile interfaces, use operating system specific patterns. — — — Someone made a purchasing decision to buy an iPhone and use iOS, someone else made a decision to purchase a Samsung and use Material Design… — — — use these platform-specific patterns to create consistent interfaces.
  4. Group similar content. Break content into smaller chunks to help users process, understand, and remember it better.
  5. Apply good defaults….

Google’s homepage demonstrates the successful simplification of the process of internet searching to two steps:

  1. Type search query (the page’s default has the cursor already in the search bar; no need to click on it)
  2. Hit Enter on the keyboard or click on the search button (either one works, so no trouble kicking off your search)

Reverse Engineer Friction to Your Advantage

Research has shown that in some situations actually introducing friction can increase the quality of the user experience, giving users a sense of accomplishment and thereby bolstering their esteem for your offering. The principle here is that people place higher value of things they have to work for than those they can obtain easily.

Let’s look at some practical implementations of friction.

Irreversible Actions:

The most practical implementation of friction is during termination or hard delete actions. These include the common ‘Are you sure?’ model, or requiring users to type the name of the repository action. Such questions require more thought and may make the user second-guess their decision.

Creating a sense of accomplishment & ownership:

IKEA built its business model around selling products full of friction. Furniture we build ourselves seems more valuable than an equivalent or even more expensive pre-assembled designer piece. By asking us to spend our weekends building a bed or table, we form a deeper connection with the product. Having struggled to assemble a piece of furniture, we feel a sense of accomplishment and ownership of that product.

Products where the user is the product:

For a site like OK Cupid, adding friction to the sign-up process or profile creation deters unmotivated users — keeping the quality of members high and the product more desirable. The sign-up process may be long and cumbersome, but the superior quality of users and their interactions further down the funnel may ultimately provide a better product and experience.

Hold Higher Esteem:

Snapchat is another classic example of a product whose success can be largely attributed to friction. Clear evidence of this is found in the need for a 10-page manual to educate potential investors on how to use the product (Snap, Inc.’s recent IPO).

Although many of the patterns it applies have been adopted by other apps — I’m looking at you Facebook, Inc. — initially their interface was unintuitive, unconventional and difficult to navigate.

Once you’d found the filters and mastered the interface, you were “in the know” and part of the tribe. This tribal knowledge created a sense of value in the app. The interface acted as a barrier to entry for suspicious parents who were still coming to terms with a selfie.

It was the first big social app to open directly to the camera. This unconventional choice encouraged people to actually create their own content, instead of just consuming others’. This reduced friction for content creation, but introduced it elsewhere.

Conclusion

When it comes to friction, less is definitely more. Whereas decreasing friction will inevitably let your customers achieve their goals more quickly and with less hassle, sometimes an increase in friction is called for. However, to successfully increase friction within an interface, you must first have an in-depth understanding of your reasons for doing so and who you’re designing for. Without a doubt, introducing friction to your product will piss off a certain archetype of user. Still, if you’re willing to lose a few stragglers in order to build long-term relationships with high-intent users, an increase in friction might be just the thing you need. — — -Remember to always introduce friction for the right tasks, and in a manner that facilitates an interaction or feeling rather than inhibit it. — — — SnapChat managed to find the perfect balance by understanding their audience and knowing exactly when to reduce (content creation) and when to introduce (delightful features) friction.

Learn more

Here are some further resources I used to research different topics

The Friction of no Friction Steve Selzer

Onboarding with the IKEA Effect: How to use UX friction to build retention Amplitude

3 Ways Friction can Improve your UX Dina Chaiffetz

How to reduce friction with good design Jerry Cao

Did Snapchat succeed because of its controversial UI Carmel DeAmicis

Simon

Written by

Simon

Head of Design at Movebubble. www.simonstate.com

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