Afraid of friction

In the 1930s industrial designer Egmont Arens introduced the concept of “humaneering”. Humaneering is the idea that you design products in such a way as to minimize friction between the product and the user.

We’ve heard a lot of similar ideas about design since then. In the fifties Henry Dreyfuss argued that design failed if the point of contact between the thing and the person became a point of friction. Talking about ubiquitous computing, Mark Weiser introduced the idea of “calm” technology in the nineties, where the computer is an extension of our unconscious. One of the best-designed services I use, WeTransfer, challenges itself to work without breaking someone’s “flow”.

The products and technologies we use have back-ends that are far more elaborate and more complex than their interfaces allow us to believe. In addition, the way in which we’ve traditionally thought about and designed our interactions with products, you could argue has only further alienated us from those products’ technological, political and social implications.