Designing with Friction: Inverting Notions of Seamless Technology

Abstract

There is growing unease and a sense within the design community of the value placed on efficient, simplified, and seamless interactions, with a growing awareness and documentation of their unintended consequences across society. By prioritizing ‘frictionless’ finance, healthcare, education products, and services, there has been a consorted effort to reduce or eliminate our daily frictions in the pursuit of efficiency and ease of use. The role of friction, however, is more nuanced than this, with a growing appreciation for designing with frictions: leveraging features usually considered problematic or exploring the benefits, barriers, and complexity beyond hindering users. In seeking a more balanced understanding of friction in systems design, this workshop will offer ways of bringing friction to the fore of design and examining its role across the domains of care, privacy, security, repairability, and autonomous vehicles. Participants will contribute to an exhibition of frictions before taking part in sessions that will unpack digital systems, identify frictions, and examine the ethical ambiguities posed by the addition or removal of friction in particular contexts. In employing the concept of friction as a critical and constructive design lens, we seek to develop further a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) agenda for future discourse that inverts and provokes preconceptions and assumptions of a seamless digital landscape.