Friction isn’t the enemy. Unplanned friction is.
Smooth flows aren’t always better. Sometimes the right amount of friction is the feature.
The reigning belief in product design is that friction is bad. Remove every step. Reduce every click. Eliminate every form field. This is true most of the time and wrong in a few important places.
The problem with zero-friction design
Frictionless flows optimise for quantity of actions. But not every action benefits from being easier. Deleting an account. Sending a bulk email. Spending money. Sharing publicly. These are decisions where a moment of friction is a feature, not a bug — it gives the user a chance to mean it.
When we remove friction from high-consequence actions, we get the classic bad outcomes: accidental purchases, regretted messages, accounts deleted in anger. The user, given more time, would have made a different choice.
“Sometimes the kindest thing a product can do is make you pause.”
Planned vs unplanned friction
Planned friction is a confirmation dialog before a destructive action. It’s a two-step flow for account deletion. It’s a short delay before ‘undo’ disappears on an important email. The user notices it for a second and is grateful you added it.
Unplanned friction is the stuff we should be removing: a required field nobody should have to fill, a password reset that takes three pages, an error message that doesn’t say what to do. The user notices this and is just annoyed.
A product without friction is dangerous. A product with only unplanned friction is frustrating. A product that uses planned friction deliberately — and removes everything else — feels respectful.
Where to add friction on purpose
High-consequence actions. Anything involving money, deletion, or public visibility.
Transitions between modes. Switching accounts, changing roles, entering admin mode — these deserve a beat, not a toggle.
Moments that need commitment. Onboarding checkpoints where making the user reaffirm their goal means they actually remember it two weeks later.
Where to remove it
Everywhere else. Browsing, exploring, casual actions. If the user can undo it trivially, make doing it instantaneous.
The craft is knowing which is which — and being willing to resist the blanket advice of ‘reduce clicks’ when a click is what the user actually needs.
Friction isn’t a dirty word. It’s a tool. Use it on purpose, remove it everywhere else, and your product will feel both fast and safe at the same time.