Roger Dooley presented during CH2019 About friction. What is it? How can you recognize it? And how can you avoid it? 

In today's fast-paced, customer-centric world, the speed and efficiency of business transactions will determine success. Roger shared his insights on discovering friction in your organization and how to avoid it. When you truly understand the impact friction can have, you can capitalize on the positive habits of customers and visitors and avoid negative habits.

What is friction?

Roger defines friction as the unnecessary expenditure of time, effort or money in performing a task. As far as he is concerned, it is clear that avoiding friction is the first thing you want to work on as an organization. Make things easier instead of changing motivation. People choose the easiest way to perform a task. Roger indicates that it is important to create a friction-aware culture within your company.

There are several types of friction, but a very important one is cognitive friction. This occurs when a user is presented with an interface that appears to be intuitive but produces unexpected results. This mismatch between the outcome of an action and the expected result causes user frustration and will hurt the user experience. User research can help uncover such problems. 

Behavioral model of BJ Fogg

The BJ Fogg behavioral model makes it easier to understand behavior. What before was often an unclear convergence of various psychological theories has become organized and specific with the advent of his model. The model is based on three elements: motivation (want), ability to change (can), and triggers.

Roger cleverly plays into this model with friction. For example, he points out that as humans we always choose the easiest way to accomplish a task, especially when motivation is low. By removing friction, you enable your customers to achieve their goals more easily. Thus, they need less motivation and thus will convert more often and faster.  

Less friction is more conversion

Get to work making tasks on your website easier. By removing friction, you can positively change the behavior of your visitors. And if you create too much friction, your customers' loyalty will be tested. After all, loyalty is subconscious and not rational.

Roger's advice is to focus on the most desired outcome and figure out the quickest and easiest approach to take that action. Make it easy for users to convert and they will keep coming back.

Big tech companies have become very good at avoiding friction. Roger gives some examples:

• Amazon: 
  • Reduction of negative feedback through a simple return process.
  • Less logging in through intelligent security that requires you to log in again only in specific cases. 
  • One-click payment.
• Google: 
  • Reduced search effort by providing relevant results.
  • Few distractions on the home screen (just the search bar and a logo). 
  • Automatic keyword completion.

Tips and tricks to reduce friction

• Use simple fonts
• Short texts
• No large forms
• Keep it simple

Roger's hope is that everyone puts on their metaphorical friction glasses and exposes bad UX & CX.

Short video of the presentation

Slides