What is Friction and When is it a Good Thing?

Alchemy For Life

0 Plays15 days ago

Well, hey there. Welcome back.

Redefining Friction: Physics vs. Process

What does friction mean to you? For most of my life, friction has just simply described a physics concept in which something rubs against something else in some way, causing a slowdown and causing heat. But now, and now is variable depending on what sector of work you’re in. Friction describes the same thing, but it’s metaphorically for processes. And you know, I’m all about systems and processes.

Intentional Friction in App Design

Here’s an example. In the new app I created that allows you to get stuff done. When you add to-do items, you can actually swipe them forward into the future. So, if you swipe it to the right, it appears on tomorrow. There’s also an arrow that you can hit to go to the next day and the next day and the next day. So, if you want to place something, let’s say a week ahead of time, you actually have to hit that button seven times. Friction. And people could say, “Well, Mark, what if I want to push something 25 days into the future? I have to hit that button 25 times.” Correct. It’s friction by design. I want it to feel like you are putting it off all that time because if I didn’t do that, you could just type in a date or use a selector to grab a date and go there. It’s gone for a month and a half. Well, if you’re pushing something that far into the future, it should really be a calendar item. But if you’re pushing something into the future, it should feel like you’re pushing it into the future.

In building this app, I learned a lot about intentional friction. I learned a lot about removing it, which is what I always try to do in any process I create. But I also learned about where it’s actually appropriate.

My Typewriter: Friction to Prevent Failure

I have a vintage Remington number 12 typewriter. I actually wrote my first story on it. And no, I’m not that old because it was created in the 20s and 30s. Every key is connected to a rather slender, thin piece of metal that has a little hammer at the end that matches the key that you hit. When you hit the key, it swings upward and hits the ink tape and creates the image onto the piece of paper. Now, on a piano, the keys do something similar. They have hammers that hit strings. On a piano, though, all those keys and hammers are parallel. You can hit as many keys as you want and they’ll all hit at the same time and not interact with each other. Not so for the typewriter. If you hit two keys at once, they will try to meet each other at the very top and they can get entangled.

There’s an old tale about the design of the keyboard, which is the modern one we use today, being designed so that you would type slower. It actually was a designed to intentionally create a lot of friction and slowing you down. Well, so the truth is it’s not exactly like that. Yes, it does slow you down, but the reason being is they tried to separate certain keys so that you wouldn’t easily hit two of the keys that would smash into each other. Again, intentional friction.