When friction is the feature

The instinct in product design is to remove friction. Shorter flows. Fewer steps. Less thinking required. We’ve built an entire discipline around making things easier.

But I work in spaces where that instinct can cause real harm.

The irreversibility problem

When someone is about to transfer a significant sum of money, or submit a document that can’t be retracted, or make a decision with downstream consequences they may not fully understand — ease is not the virtue.

In these moments, friction is the feature.

A confirmation step isn’t a UX failure. A deliberate pause — a summary screen, a clearly-worded warning, an explicit “yes, I understand” — is a design decision that respects the weight of what’s happening.

Clarity is not always the same as simplicity. Sometimes clarity requires adding things, not removing them.

What this looks like in practice

I’ve spent a lot of time designing compliance tools, fraud prevention flows, and regulated financial journeys. The patterns that work aren’t the ones borrowed from e-commerce checkouts. They’re the ones built around the user’s actual mental model of consequence.

That means:

• Naming the action explicitly. “Submit application” is not the same as “This decision is final.” Say the second thing.
• Surfacing what happens next. Not just confirmation — the specific, real-world consequences.
• Preserving the user’s sense of control, even when the system requires them to take an irreversible step.

The trust equation

Users in regulated environments are often already anxious. The system may feel opaque, the language unfamiliar, the stakes unclear. In these conditions, a “frictionless” experience often reads as suspicious — too easy, not serious enough.

Deliberate, well-designed friction signals that the system takes the decision seriously. And that signals trustworthiness.

That’s not a bug. That’s the whole point.