Good vs bad friction in design: scales to tell the difference

Intentional friction helps us be better creators, coworkers, learners, people. Accidental friction is…. annoying. How do we tell the difference, and design for it?

I started with human agency because I strongly believe that designing for it, especially in the future, is the most important thing we as designers can contribute to the world. In the context the technological developments of the last few years, we have been talking about AI agents and agentic AI a lot — and those conversations can stay productive only ifour modes of thought are aligned on human values. While I’m not really suggesting we are on the way to evil self-sufficient robots yet, we are headed towards what Wall-E imagined in 2008: mindless consumption, loss of resources, decreasing health, and political apathy. I wonder if the creators of Wall-E knew how right their predictions would seem.

Screengrab from Wall-E (2008).

One method to infuse products with agency — and I believe there are many — is to add thoughtful, intentional friction. You have actually experienced this kind of friction in digital…