Friction by design
Why introducing pause, reflection and mindful interactions could contribute to build the right user experience for digital health solutions
Friction can be a major source of frustration for users and can lead to them abandoning the product or service altogether. Very often it becomes an obsession for product leaders and designers to minimize friction points, designing a clear and intuitive interface, optimizing for speed and performance, and using clear and concise language.
On the other hand, friction can also be designed intentionally to introduce obstacles or inconveniences in order to guide the user towards a desired outcome. This can be used to encourage certain behaviors or prevent unwanted actions. A typical - an extremely frustrating - example is to make more difficult for a user to cancel a subscription or delete an account. This might involve requiring the user to go through several confirmation steps or providing them with information about the consequences of their action before allowing them to proceed. Which, apart from the frustration and poor user experience it also raises a number of ethical implications.
However, in some cases, friction by design it could be an interesting approach. Design frictions can prompt moments of reflection, prevent and anticipate errors, enable users to be more mindful about key actions, nudging and help users to achieve their goals or to introduce a moment of pause as part of the core experience. Most of these considerations are actually very relevant when building digital health solutions. Compare to other consumer solutions, digital health is always touching on sensitive topics and with significant implications for the end users. Thus, introducing friction by design at certain points could be a smart decision that contributes to build a pleasant, mindful and caring experience.