In Defence of Friction (Sometimes)

You press a button and nothing happens.

So you press again, harder, as if effort might make a difference.

That instinct, that need for a little resistance, is older than software.

We learned to trust the world by feeling it push back. Doors clicked. Levers clunked. Switches had weight. The feedback told you something real had happened.

Now most interfaces are made of light. Everything yields. And when everything is frictionless, it starts to feel frictionless in the other sense too - slippery, disposable, unearned.

But before we start romanticising struggle, let’s be fair. Friction is also what stops people using your product.

Every extra field in a form. Every redundant click. Every spinner that hangs just long enough for you to wonder if you’ve broken the internet. For years, removing that has been good design hygiene. It’s why we have one-click checkout, autofill, password managers, and the general expectation that nothing should take more than a breath… ideally a very short breath.

Reducing friction works because people are lazy in the best possible way. We conserve energy. Strip away enough resistance and you get faster decisions, fewer errors, higher completion.

Sometimes that’s the whole point. A well-oiled machine should stay that way.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is we quietly moved from “remove pointless friction” to “remove friction, full stop”. (For my transatlantic cousins, full stop is a period.)

And once you do that, the product starts making more decisions on the user’s behalf - not with malice, just with momentum.

That’s where friction stops being a usability topic and becomes an agency topic.

If you’ve been writing about cognitive sovereignty and curation (and long term readers know I have been), this is the practical sibling:

• Curation is the work of choosing what deserves your attention.
• Sovereignty is the right to make those choices for yourself.
• Friction is one of the few tools we have left to keep the human in the loop.

We use friction not to slow people down for sport, but to keep the choice visible.

The cult of smooth

Somewhere along the way, smoothness became a religion.

Design teams run conversion experiments where the winner is always the one with fewer steps. Leaders ask for “drop-off reduction”, not “decision confidence”. We optimise for movement, not meaning.

The result is a generation of digital experiences that feel efficient but hollow - like automatic doors that never quite let you arrive.

And it’s not just aesthetic. When an experience is too smooth, it becomes harder to tell:

• what you chose
• what the system chose for you
• and what happened without anyone choosing at all

Auto-play starts the next thing before you’ve decided you want it. Infinite scroll turns “a quick look” into “a 2am doom scroll extravaganza”. AI summaries answer the question before you’ve even reached the page.

Everything works. Everything flows. Nothing asks if you meant it.

Smoothness is brilliant for execution, but it can be terrible for judgement, and judgement is the whole point of curation.

Friction is a force, not a flaw

Friction isn’t just an obstacle. It’s a force. It shapes behaviour.

A gear stick has resistance because it’s guiding you. It wants you to feel the notch, to know you’re in gear. A real brake pedal pushes back because it’s translating consequence into sensation.

In physical design we use friction to communicate certainty and control. Digital design can borrow that logic - not by making everything slower, but by placing resistance where it does useful work.

Used well, friction can:

• protect people from accidental harm
• reinforce intention
• teach through feedback
• add weight to irreversible actions
• restore context when automation starts carrying people along

When you remove all friction from choice, you don’t remove work. You relocate it. Usually onto the algorithm, the default, or whoever paid to be the next thing.

You outsource judgement - and then act surprised when people stop exercising it.

The friction ladder

Here’s a simple model you can steal.

Most teams treat friction as a single thing: “less is better”. It isn’t. The right amount depends on consequence.

Think of a ladder:

1. Low consequence, high frequency
   Switching tabs, saving drafts, scanning lists.
   Make it smooth. Friction here is just petty.
2. Medium consequence, reversible
   Editing content, changing settings, moving files.
   Prioritise feedback and recovery. Make it easy to undo.
3. High consequence, irreversible or expensive
   Publishing, sending, paying, deleting, granting access.
   Add a pause and add clarity. Make intent explicit.
4. High consequence, socially amplified
   Sharing publicly, forwarding sensitive content, recommending to others.
   Add context. Remind people who will see it and what it means.

(I get the feeling I’ll be writing more about ladders in the future, it’s a nice metaphor)

If you treat everything like rung 1, you get speed - and collateral damage.
If you treat everything like rung 4, you get safety theatre - and people who click through warnings like they’re closing pop-ups on a thrice cursed printer.

Good friction is tuned. It has a job.

Four kinds of good friction

The best friction tends to fall into a few repeatable patterns.

1) Protective friction

This is friction that prevents accidental harm.

• “Undo send” in email
• a short delay before deleting something important
• re-checking a new bank payee
• confirming the impact of an action, not just the action itself

Protective friction should feel like a seatbelt, not a lecture.

A useful rule: undo beats confirm.

“Are you sure?” is lazy friction. Undo is generous friction.

One asks for a promise you won’t regret it. The other accepts that you might. Which one would you rather your friend offered you?

2) Instructional friction

This is friction that helps people form a mental model. It teaches through feedback.

Games understand this. You don’t learn by reading a pamphlet. You learn by trying, failing, and getting clear signals back from the system. Worth noting that people choose to play games with no real external reward… at least most of the time.

Other digital products can do the same:

• inline validation that catches errors early
• thresholds that resist when you’re nearing danger
• previews that show what will happen before it does

Instructional friction turns “I did it” into “I understand it”.

And understanding is a form of sovereignty. If you can’t understand what’s happening, you can’t really choose. You can only comply.

3) Ceremonial friction

Some actions deserve ceremony.

Publishing. Deleting. Sending widely. Spending money. Summoning demons. Granting admin access and then acting shocked when everything burns later… perhaps the demons?

Ceremonial friction is a pause that marks a boundary. It says: this is real, be awake when you do it.

Not more steps. Just the right moment of seriousness.

4) Context friction

This is the one most teams forget, and it’s the one that matters most in personalised, automated, and summarised experiences.

Context friction restores orientation.

It’s the product admitting: “I’ve been making choices in the background. Here’s what I’m doing, and why.”

Examples:

• “Why am I seeing this?” on a feed item
• a recommendation engine that shows the inputs it used
• an AI summary that links to sources and makes browsing possible
• a share flow that gently asks if you’ve actually read the thing you’re sharing… you did read this, right?

Context friction doesn’t slow you down for its own sake. It gives you the information you need to curate your own attention.

If cognitive sovereignty is the right to choose your next thought, context friction is how you avoid having your next thought chosen by default.

The wrong kind of rough

Of course, not all friction is noble.

Bad friction is just mess. Hostile forms. Indecipherable error states. Confirmation modals that appear so often you click them like a trained crow collecting cigarette butts.

Bad friction makes you feel stupid. Good friction makes you feel considered.

Then there’s the third category - the one we should name properly.

Weaponised friction.

Cue ominous orchestral stab.

Unsubscribe loops. Cookie banners designed to exhaust you into consent. Cancellation flows that become a scavenger hunt. Settings that are technically available, but emotionally punishing to find.

This is friction designed to change your behaviour for someone else’s benefit and most likely profit.

Persuasion by irritation. Design as sandpaper.

And it’s the dark twin of the cult of smooth. Smoothness pulls you forward. Weaponised friction stops you leaving. Either way, the user’s agency is the expendable material.

A friction audit you can actually run

If you want to make this practical inside a team, run a friction audit. Pick one core journey and label every moment of resistance.

Then ask five questions:

1. Is the friction proportional to the consequence?
   Irreversible actions deserve a real pause. Reversible actions deserve recovery.
2. Who does this friction serve?
   User safety, system integrity, legal compliance, revenue retention. If it serves the business, say so. Then decide if you still like it.
3. Does it increase clarity, or just add steps?
   If it adds confusion, it’s not protective. It’s sloppy.
4. Is recovery built in?
   Prefer undo, versioning, and reversible states over repeated confirmations.
5. Does it support judgement?
   The best friction doesn’t just slow people down - it helps them choose.

This last one is the bridge back to curation.

Curation needs moments of decision. It needs you to notice what’s happening. If the interface removes those moments, the user can’t curate. They can only accept.

Reclaiming the feel of digital

We’ve spent two decades chasing seamlessness. Maybe it’s time to chase felt sense.

Not skeuomorphism. Not fake textures and “delight”. Just experiences where consequence has weight, and where the product supports intention as much as it supports completion.

That can be as subtle as:

• a serious action taking a fraction longer than a trivial one
• a confirmation that shows impact, not just words
• a recommendation engine that occasionally asks what you want, rather than guessing
• a summary layer that makes room for browsing, not just answering

Friction, in the right place, gives digital work a sense of consequence.

It’s the designer’s way of saying: this matters.

Friction gives form to intent.
Smoothness gives ease to action.
Good design knows when to trade one for the other.

And in an age of auto-everything, that trade is no longer just about conversion.

It’s about keeping the human present.

A Resistant Moment

Pick one flow in your product where “success” is easy but “understanding” is optional.

What would a respectful pause look like there?

Not more steps.
Not more warnings.

Just a small moment that makes intent visible again - so the user can curate their own action, instead of being carried by default.