What is Friction?

The word friction is used a lot in product design.  "Create a frictionless experience." "Reduce friction for our consumers." But what is friction? A common misconception is asking the user to interact with a product anything more than the absolute bare minimum creates friction.  This drives product owners to employ techniques such as strict limits to the number of steps, removing consumer input prompts, and doing too much "on behalf of" the user with limited data.  On its own, requiring the consumer to interact with a product does not create friction.  What creates friction is increasing the likelihood of a failure through poor implementation. 

Take this example:  Rhonda wants to help out her mother by ordering groceries and having them delivered to her mother's house.  She launches the app, selects a store, creates an order, and goes to checkout.  On the checkout screen she  the address is set to her address so she changes it to her mother's house and taps submit.  Her mother's address is not within the store's delivery range so she is presented with an error. 

At this point Rhonda has experienced a clash of wills with the app and is an unhappy consumer.  Had she been able to set her address up front she would have been able to select a store that delivered to her mother and not wasted so much time.

Techniques to Reduce Friction

• When setting data on behalf of the user make the values selected obvious.
• Use defaults, but also make it easy for the user to change them.
• Front load decisions that may result in an error later in the flow.
• If you have to limit interaction points, focus on the decisions that have the greatest likelihood of resulting in a success or failure.
• Consider changing scope if you are unable to minimize the opportunity for failure.

Square pegs do not fit into round holes and frustrated consumers do not use your product.  Be explicit, allow the user to provide input, and fail early to reduce friction in your products.