There’s a religion in product design: remove friction at all costs. One-click checkouts. Auto-filled forms. Infinite scroll. We’ve spent two decades eliminating every possible barrier between users and actions.
And we’ve created products people don’t value.
The uncomfortable truth nobody wants to admit: friction isn’t the enemy of engagement—it’s often the source of it.
The IKEA Effect, Digitized
Behavioral economists have known for decades that people value things more when they’ve invested effort into them. Build your own furniture, and you’ll irrationally treasure it. Put work into something, and your brain retroactively decides it must have been worth it.
But somehow, in digital products, we’ve convinced ourselves this principle doesn’t apply.
Spotify could auto-generate playlists for every mood and moment. They have the data and the algorithms. Instead, they let users spend hours curating their own. Why? Because a playlist you built is yours in a way an algorithmic suggestion never will be.
Notion could have templates that auto-populate everything. They offer templates, sure, but their core experience is a blank page and building blocks. The “easier” tool would be Evernote or Google Docs. But Notion users don’t want easier—they want the satisfaction of building their own system.
The Three Types of Good Friction
Not all friction is created equal. There’s pointless friction (broken flows, confusing navigation, technical debt) and then there’s purposeful friction—the kind that actually increases long-term engagement.
1. Commitment Friction
Tinder could show you everyone in your city at once. Instead, they make you swipe one profile at a time. This isn’t technical limitation—it’s deliberate pacing. Each swipe is a micro-decision, a small commitment. The friction transforms passive browsing into active choosing.
Duolingo could unlock all lessons immediately. They don’t. You have to complete earlier lessons first, even though they know you might already know that material. The locked lessons aren’t just gamification—they’re a commitment device. You value the advanced content more because you earned access to it.
2. Contemplation Friction
Gmail’s “Undo Send” feature adds friction to sending email—but it’s friction that prevents regret. That 5-10 second delay isn’t a bug; it’s a forcing function for a moment of reflection.
Banking apps now add friction to large transfers: confirmation screens, multi-factor authentication, delay periods. This isn’t just security theater—it’s preventing the rash decision that gets regretted hours later.
Twitter’s “read before you retweet” prompt for articles adds a speed bump. Does it reduce engagement? Probably. Does it reduce the spread of misinformation from people sharing articles they haven’t read? That’s the bet.
3. Investment Friction
LinkedIn could auto-generate your profile from your resume. They make you fill it out manually instead. Every section you complete is an investment. The more time you sink in, the more likely you are to stay.
Strava could just track your runs automatically and silently. Instead, you have to press “Start” and “Stop” on every activity. You have to title your runs. You have to decide what’s public. These manual steps transform passive tracking into active athletic identity.
The Onboarding Trap
Here’s where most products catastrophically misunderstand friction: they remove it from exactly the wrong places.
Everyone’s obsessed with “time to value”—getting users to their first win as fast as possible. So we skip account setup. We defer profile completion. We use “magic links” instead of passwords. We auto-fill everything.
And then we wonder why users churn after day one.
The users who filled out complete profiles, who chose settings, who made deliberate configuration choices? They stick around. They invested effort. Their brain has decided this product matters.
Slack doesn’t let you skip workspace setup. You have to name your workspace, invite people, create channels. This takes time. It creates friction. It also creates commitment.
The Paradox of Choice, Inverted
We know that too many options paralyze people. The classic jam study: 24 flavors attract attention but 6 flavors drive sales.
But here’s what gets missed: constraint is a form of friction, and the right constraints increase engagement.
Instagram’s original constraint—square photos only—was a limitation that became an identity. TikTok’s time limits aren’t technical necessity; they’re creative constraints that make the platform feel distinct.
Wordle could give you unlimited guesses. The six-guess limit is artificial friction. It’s also the entire reason people share their results. The constraint creates the story.
The Deletion Test
Want to know if you’ve over-optimized for frictionlessness?
Ask yourself: “If this feature disappeared tomorrow, would users notice and care?”
If they wouldn’t notice, your friction removal went too far. You’ve made something so effortless it’s become invisible, valueless, forgettable.
YouTube auto-playing the next video isn’t valuable friction removal—it’s habit exploitation. You don’t choose to watch the next video; it just happens. There’s no agency, so there’s no satisfaction.
Netflix asking “Are you still watching?” is good friction. It breaks the zombie scroll. It forces a moment of choice. Some users find it annoying, but it’s friction in service of intentionality.
The Effort Equation
The relationship between effort and value isn’t linear—it’s curved.
Too little effort: low perceived value, easy abandonment Optimal effort: high perceived value, strong retention Too much effort: frustration, abandonment
Most products are obsessed with moving left on this curve, reducing effort. But the engagement sweet spot is actually in the middle—where users feel like they’re doing something, not just consuming.
Peloton could make their classes easier. They don’t. The difficulty is the point. The effort creates the transformation story users tell themselves.
The Design Principle Nobody Teaches
Here it is: Make the first action harder, and the repeated actions easier.
Reverse of how most products work.
Figma has a learning curve. The first time you use it, you’re not immediately productive. But once you learn it, you’re fast. Compare this to tools that are instantly intuitive but never get faster with mastery—there’s no progression, no skill development, no growing expertise to be proud of.
Vim, the text editor, is famously difficult to learn. It’s also famously beloved by those who master it. The difficulty isn’t a bug—it’s a filter that selects for people who value the tool enough to invest in it.
The Real Metric
Time-to-value is a vanity metric if those users churn next week.
The metric that actually matters: time-to-investment. How long until users do something that costs them effort? That’s when they mentally commit.
The products that last aren’t the easiest ones. They’re the ones that make you feel capable, accomplished, invested.
Sometimes the best UX decision is making users work for it.