Ground, Not Friction

So many talks in designing for “friction” — against the smooth-and-all-available design ethos — also as a response to the void of negativity in design thinking (not that design thinking). Yet the framing, like the framing of degrowth, shares the same issue — or rather, the framing isn’t wrong so much as it looks at the wrong layer. And it is this misplaced focus that causes the friction-design method to confuse itself — what is the difference between a good friction and a bad friction? Where does good friction stop and pure obstaclism start? The design-for-friction framework can’t answer these questions from its inside.

Rather, friction is a byproduct when design is thought as a process of authoring. To design with a ground is to infuse a telos into the be-designed that is other than serving. The ground could come from a sense of auteur; or it could be acknowledging the materiality of its material; or it could be having a “soul” — in simple terms, a kind of agency and agenda of its own that is not in command with the “user.”

When the be-designed is thought this way, it will naturally carry un-serving characters that are not put there as a sign of un-serving — which is the paradigm of the hurdle for hurdle’s sake — but may be encountered as, beneath felt as, friction — yet it has a clear positive idea of its own.