Interaction Design And Small Events
There’s some correlation between the size of an event and it’s complexity, but complexity and significance aren’t necessarily linked.
When we design interactions that reduce friction, we’re making the entire event of interacting with a space/product/person smaller. The smaller the interaction, the more of them we can fit into our lives. The more of something there is, the less valuable it becomes to us by default. We become more comfortable with taking what we have in abundance for granted.
This has ramifications. When what used to be significant investments and decisions become things that can be qualified in moments, and what’s broken can always be replaced, we lose the reasons that used to force us to examine them closely. For example, much has been written about how dehumanizing online dating feels, as the next person is merely a click or two away.
When we become acclimated to frictionless experience, the friction that remains has more impact, becomes more irritating. This changes what we are willing to tolerate, and we may be sacrificing things in our irritation that we genuinely need. In the above picture, I can’t tell the difference between the grains of sand in those hands, and the grains slipping through human fingers. If those grains were ideas, potential friends and lovers, or life saving technology that required significant investment, how would I be able to differentiate them from all the rest if I wasn’t willing to take the time.
More importantly, how would the one grain of sand I choose out of all the others mean anything to me?
From a branding perspective, friction is differentiation, differentiation is complexity. Justifying the friction gets harder every time attention spans get worse.
They just got worse.
They just got worse again.
We need a better model, and we’re going to have to build one that contains everything we let out of Pandora's Box.
