Useful Frictions

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course fulfills CCT's Methods requirement. Course Description: Friction makes things more difficult, and is therefore typically a bad thing when it comes to User Experiences. Many pages have been written about the virtues of minimizing friction and many more on ways to remove it from user interactions of every type. Yet, if we interrogate the philosophical assumptions underlying these positions other possibilities emerge. The field of user experience has advanced alongside other sub-disciplines in technology and design. This family resemblance extends to issues of ethics as well. Just as technologies have largely advanced with efficiency and profit as the main drivers of innovation, so too has UX evolved to uncritically reduce friction in the name of these same goals. "Buy it now" buttons reduce the friction on our purchases, infinite scrolls of news feeds or cat videos keep us from thinking about how much time we've been wasting, it has never been easier to "find our friends" as long as we're willing to give up our privacy by accepting the default settings. As the technology industry begins to question its underlying assumptions, it is time to also rethink the value and the usefulness of friction. In this course we will subvert the most common methods of user experience design to introduce friction into our technological interactions and create much needed mental and physical space. How we use it is up to you.