Feature
The Gist
- It’s all about friction, honey! Modern CX design conversations are all about removing friction and enabling "friction-free" consumer journeys, no matter what.
- But, what kind? Could there be strategic benefits by deliberately introducing friction or challenges at specific touchpoints or strategic points in the customer journey?
- Balance is everything. Go too far, and you risk losing the customer. Don’t go far enough and you risk security lapses or loss of credibility and trust.
Ever since Elon Musk decided that limiting the number of tweets (or X’s) one could read was in our best interest, positive friction has been on my mind.
What is positive friction and why does it play such an important (perhaps underestimated) role in customer experience (CX) design?
The answer, it seems, lies in human psychology.
But first, a story. Long before the internet blew up DIY cooking, General Mills introduced (arguably) the first instant cake mix in 1952. The Betty Crocker recipe literally needed people to “just add water.”
It was touted to be a sellout.
Instead, it made home bakers (in the ’50s that was basically just moms) feel like sellouts.
They drilled the problem down to the fact that humans feel a psychological sense of ownership — or a closer connection to the product or brand — when they have invested at least some time and effort into it, or where they have contributed to the creation of the end result in some way.
General Mills used that insight to replace the pre-added powdered egg in the formula, with the baker needing to physically add one fresh egg. Sales soared.
We see the same notion work with IKEA, Legos, DIY meal kits — and pretty much every video game.
And yet, modern CX design conversations are all about removing friction and enabling “friction-free” consumer journeys, no matter what.
Could there be some strategic benefits of introducing friction or challenges at specific touchpoints or strategic points in the customer journey? And if yes, when and why?
Related Article: Your CX Design Is Not Working. Are You Doing It Right?
Why Positive Friction Matters in Modern CX Design
Positive friction is essentially a UX technique, used by product and UX designers to minimize user mistakes within a given journey.
But CX is not UX, said Scott Turner, former global head of digital client experience and products at consulting firm Mercer. If CX is the customer's cumulative experience of a brand, based on all their interactions at all the touchpoints where they encounter the brand, UX is a user's experience of a product or a feature at a given moment.
That said, positive friction can and should be extended as a CX technique. Brands today are using it in interesting and strategic ways to improve user engagement, create customer connection or affinity, and even impact retention and basket size.
To Create Brand Affinity and Trust
Good CX is inherently about producing reciprocal lifetime value for both — the customer and the brand. If a company is only producing extra year-over-year (YoY) revenue, but not delivering YoY value to a customer, chances are, that customer will not remain a customer much longer, said Turner.
In that context, positive friction can help demonstrate a brand's commitment to delivering reciprocal value to a customer. It's a way of showing customers that their best interests come first for the brand and it’s not just about making money from them.
Take the example of healthcare enrollment products. People want to enroll in as short a time as possible and purchase maximum coverage for their family, said Turner, who has designed several of these programs. This tendency runs counter to ensuring each customer purchases the right health care coverage to fit their needs. And the stakes are real. Customers who purchase more coverage than they actually need have wasted money, and if they purchase too little coverage, they could be faced with significant medical debt, which has resulted in bankruptcy for too many Americans.
Leveraging positive friction at the right moments in the enrollment process, suggested Turner, helps buyers get optimal value while winning the brand user trust and brand affinity in a generally low-trust industry.
The recent rise of "instant purchase" options in ecommerce is another area where positive friction could build affinity. A 100% friction-free check-out could mean eliminating a key moment for shoppers to check variables (size, color) and a last chance to be OK with the purchase. “Since we know that only a small set of customers ever return/ fix mistakes, this is a mistake when seen through the lifetime value and loyalty lens,” said Turner.
For Health, Well-Being, Self-Regulation and Behavioral Change
Positive friction can be a powerful tool to help users improve their physical or mental health, or adopt new habits that are beneficial for them.
For example, Duolingo added daily streaks to its language learning app, which increases both — the commitment and the challenge for the learner. It has resulted in making users more engaged and motivated to learn than before.
Headspace, a meditation app, asks users to set a daily reminder and choose a time and duration for their practice, creating a sense of commitment and accountability.
Turner adds the example of the Tesla app. If car owners haven't been getting optimal miles per charge, the app lets them know why. “Usually, it’s because you're driving way over the speed limit, which affects gas cars too. It’s just they never tell you that you're wasting your money every time you drive like a fool,” he finished.
Gen Z, in general, seems to relate to social media apps that put constraints on usage as a way to encourage more authentic socialization. For example, the social sharing app BeReal uses positive friction that users truly value: You can only post once a day and there are no filters, and the Thursday dating app only allows users to meet up once a week.
Perhaps adding positive friction at well-chosen touchpoints acts as a circuit breaker to the passive consumption model. It helps consumers introduce some agency back in a world where algorithms control everything we see and experience.
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To Double-Check Important Actions and Maintain Security
Positive friction is known to help customers avoid unintentional mistakes. We’ve particularly seen it used in banking and financial services to prevent users from making irreversible or inadvertent mistakes.
But nowadays, we see more and more SaaS and consumer tech companies using the concept to help make smarter and better decisions.
For example, Gmail checks you each time you try to send an email without an attachment, or are deleting a file. Shopify and even Amazon allow users to review their purchases before paying.
Figma, the web interface design tool, doesn’t allow users to modify certain properties of a component, asking them to create variants instead. This makes users think more carefully about their components and the variants required, said Anh Nguyen, UX designer for the revenue ops platform Nektar.ai.
Similarly, Slack users are alerted in advance about how the message they send may affect the recipients, making them more aware and can decide whether they want the recipients to be notified or not.
To Give Users More Control and Ownership
While the primary goal is to provide users with a seamless experience, companies sometimes introduce positive friction to let users take more ownership of their usage.
The Nektar.ai platform, for example, uses positive friction for some self-serve features. Their goal was to give users better control of their own settings and configurations, help users be more mindful of their decisions, and educate and nudge them toward cleaner and more maintainable configurations.
Nguyen explains, “In the Nektar product, there are two distinct but related concepts that users must manage: 'buzzes’ and ‘flags.' The least friction workflow would actually use just a single form to create a linked buzz and a flag. However, we went with a higher-friction solution — using separate forms for each — because it educates users that these are separate concepts, shows them they can be reused and combined in various ways, and shows them where and how they can be edited and linked together. Adding some positive friction to the initial creation flow helped improve users' ability to manage what they've created.”
Related Article: What Is Design Thinking for CX?
Balance Is Everything
Ultimately, positive friction is not a one-size-fits-all idea.
CX designers need to find the right balance for their product, industry, geography and customer segments.
Go too far, and you risk losing the customer. Don’t go far enough and you risk security lapses or loss of credibility and customer trust.
For example, in ecommerce, every second of delay or friction can lead to cart abandonment. But not putting the right security checks in place can lead to even more lost time dealing with customer support, credit card companies, or bank fraud. That could mean hours wasted and an experience the customer will forever associate with your brand.
On the other hand, an exclusive luxury club could introduce significant friction into its membership application process without putting customers off, and maybe even increase their desire to join!
At Nektar, said Nguyen, designers are very careful about the trade-offs involved. After all, it would be counterproductive if users see something as a nuisance and find workarounds that result in suboptimal configurations.
It’s important to question assumptions in CX design.
For example, do all customers really value speed or lower prices? Do all customers reject the idea of sharing personal information? The trick is to introduce positive friction in a way that the customer sees the value in it. That is where CX designers need to work their magic.
For responsible brands keen on winning customer loyalty, CX design is not about eliminating friction at all costs, but about creating an experience that delivers value without compromising the customer’s best interests. Or as Turner puts it, “Journeys go back to the drawing board if they don't pass the 'looking the customer in the eye' test.”
