Friction in software design and interaction
Jan 4 2025
I’ve been reflecting on the topic of friction in software design and interfaces for a while now. I believe it started when I read this passage from the paper “Envisioning Information Access Systems: What Makes for Good Tools and a Healthy Web?” by Chirag Shah and Emily Bender:
Most systems are designed with the idea that they are supporting users who prefer to put in as little effort as possible when accessing information. This is certainly a desired characteristic of an IA system. However, we argue that it is not always advisable to minimize this effort, especially if it takes away the ability for a user to learn, for instance due to lack of transparency. We believe, and as others have supported, that certain amount of ‘friction’ in an IA process is a good thing to have.
The paper’s focus is on search and information access, but one could extrapolate it to any user-facing technology, and I’ve been especially concerned by its implications towards software and user-interface design. The paper they cite by Jeremy Pickens is a good read as well. However, I don’t think either paper truly captures the scale of the problem, which precedes AI.
Friction is impressed upon developers and software designers as something to avoid and design away first. At least, that’s how I understood it (even though I hadn’t mapped the lexical item friction to this concept) when I learned programming and app development by myself. Formally trained UI/UX designers, or those who’ve worked in the area for years clearly realize its utility and value. However, I’d contend that eliminating friction, not making users read/think/wait, and designing easy-to-use interfaces that delight users is the overwhelming default mode of dealing with friction in software design.
The Verge’s interview of Google CEO Sundar Pichai back in May 2024 exemplifies this thinking. Pichai acknowledges the trade-offs inherent in providing users with instant LLM-generated answers at several points — but that hasn’t stopped them from stuffing AI answers and summaries everywhere. Choosing not to include AI summaries, or even introducing the least friction into the process, would promote a healthy web ecosystem and have other social and individual benefits in the long term (as Shah & Bender argue in their paper). But someone else would just do it and threaten Google’s dominant position in tech. The Big in Big Tech isn’t just a modifier — it’s fundamental to what these companies are and how they operate.
Perhaps the default way of conceptualizing friction in software design served users and society well until the early 2010s. But the smartphone, ubiquitous internet, social media, and now AI have changed how I think about it. Sometimes you have to frustrate individual users for the well being of the community. Unfortunately, the default path is heavily incentivized, since there’s a lot of potential money (and power) at the end.
What have I done?
Oct 13 2024
It’s been a while since I’ve written any blog posts. When I think about my heroes, a few names come to mind: Christopher Hitchens, Jessica Valenti, Chomsky, Ambedkar, and Tom Scott. I see the failings of some of them now, but I still consider them my heroes because I was obsessed with anything and everything they wrote or said that I could find. When I realized I look up to Tom Scott, I understood why I was obsessed with all of them — they kept writing and working on new projects. They were never satisfied. I’ve been paralyzed internally trying to find satisfaction, or re-gain my attention, when the answer is quite simple; There is no closure, I just need to keep working on new projects (and writing).
Publishing DeTeXt on the App Store was exhilarating, because I made it. The last few years of my life have been the best, and the worst. But the numbness that I recognize internally, can be traced back to the root cause of failing to make things. Anything. This blog post, an app, research, kozhukattai…I should be able to say ‘I made this’ much more often.
Authentic Schmauthentic
Dec 31 2023
What the fuck does authentic mean anyway? … The term ‘‘authentic’’ … is essentially meaningless. ‘‘Authentic’’ when? ‘‘Authentic’’ to whom? But it sounds good and wise doesn’t it?
Anthony Bourdain. ‘‘14. Alan Richman is a Douchebag’’. Medium Raw
Some things leave a clear semantic trace in my mind — I don’t remember the exact words1, nor the circumstances, but they leave a dent. In my mind, Bourdain’s acerbic takedown of a journalist questioning the authenticity of Creole cuisine is up there with Siracusa expounding on sports, or the final shot in Ozu’s The Only Son. They contain multitudes in so little, and not just because they’re akin to pithy aphorisms — they nudge me to research, read, learn, and ponder on their meaning endlessly. They enrich my life, my work, and relationships, even if it involves uncomfortable introspection.
Questioning the authenticity of food especially evoke a deep-seated rejection fermented by years of pondering on Bourdain’s words, and my own cowering behind that empty word. This isn’t to say one can’t criticize food (or any cultural product), but if you see fit to judge and expound on it, be decent enough to admit what you’re doing and why — maybe you wanna feel superior, or occupy space in the conversation, or be seen. You can do that without empty gestures towards authenticity.
Funnily enough, what I yearn is for people to be genuinely authentic (in the sense of be honest about what you’re feeling or wanting) with me.
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which is just as well, since I enjoyed re-reading this chapter, and the book, perhaps just as much as the first time, in the process of finding this excerpt. Bourdain could write and cook — I’m still not good enough at the former. ↩
The Responsibility of Non Residential Intellectuals
Dec 9 2023
It is easy for an American intellectual to deliver homilies on the virtues of freedom and liberty, but if he is really concerned about, say, Chinese totalitarianism or the burdens imposed on the Chinese peasantry in forced industrialization, then he should face a task that is infinitely more important and challenging—the task of creating, in the United States, the intellectual and moral climate, as well as the social and economic conditions, that would permit this country to participate in modernization and development in a way commensurate with its material wealth and technical capacity.
I have lived in the US for over 6 years. I feel like I’ve come of age here — certainly I didn’t dwell on my responsibilities much when I lived in India. I think I want to live here, even though I don’t belong (and never will), but what of this responsibility I feel (with my freedoms) to do something about injustices in India?
Answering these questions1 are important to me, since it clarifies the root of disagreements with family, friends and colleagues, and how to effectively fight injustice in India. I don’t have a great answer yet — but the strong whiff of bullshit from me when opposing injustices in the US when India made me is a good enough motivator to find an answer.
So what are the responsibilities of the non-resident intellectual beyond seeking the truth back home, and the historical context of the truth? Supporting intellectuals and activists back home must be one of them, if not the foremost one.
I'm thinking of ending things with attention again
October 9 2023
Two years ago, I thought I would ‘discipline’ myself by being deliberate with the way I spend time online. I have failed, quite spectacularly at that. I can’t keep myself off hacker news, reddit, twitter, or any of the million blogs out there. More often than not, there’s nothing there when I visit them. But the random reinforcement of something that might scratch my itch always has me coming back.
What is to be done? The fix-the-system crowd wax philosophy about how loverly it would be in their world where we’re one with nature, and how we need to organize and fight corporations. My patience is thin with these pleas, especially with this issue. What’s more likely to happen — that I discipline how I allocate my attention, or that the internet economy re-aligns itself through self or external regulation around the amorphous concern of ‘attention’?
I’ll take my chances with disciplining myself.