Design Intelligence #12: Added texture
The people, products and ideas choosing to unsmooth daily life, stop time from flying, and build resilience
The idea: Designing friction
Memories are formed by unusual occurrences. When life is smooth, they happen less frequently. When you become settled, comfortable, and busy enough to be productively occupied, time will pass more quickly (this is how whole decades can pass in a blink). In a new study published in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers confirmed that viewing memorable images dilated people’s sense of time. “What it suggests is that if we want time to feel like things are [taking] longer, we need to seek out things that are themselves more memorable. And by that I mean things that are novel and interesting and new to us,” said co-author Professor Martin Wiener.
These types of things have been purposefully minimised over the past fifteen years or so. Digitised systems have created the feeling of convenience by smoothing over the friction of in-person services - sometimes just by outsourcing the work to other people, hidden behind the code, like the teams who reviewed the work of Amazon’s Just Walk Out tech. The long-term effect of almost every system digitising and dematerialising is that these processes have monotonised our daily experiences. AI agents and assistants are currently set on a path of development that will exacerbate this.
But just as I don’t believe that homogenised aesthetics are here to stay, I also don’t think that algorithmic culture is permanent. People are already rejecting it, and the For You pages of social media have started to adapt as tech companies realise that people enjoy wildcards. These wildcards often happen offscreen, and as conversations about the harms of social media use continue to swirl, people are looking for ways to look away. The Roots screentime app forces users to stop scrolling, working out which uses represent deep engagement and which are “digital dopamine”.
In the next few years, we’ll see friction start to be reintroduced. We can already see it with the increasing popularity of products that divorce people from their smartphones, however temporarily - like the dumbphones that have found a niche audience. “It’s just the absolute perfect amount of friction,” reviewer Craig Mod has said of the Boox Palma, a new device that melds an e-reader with a limited number of “phone-like” functionalities, such as music and navigation.
Another mode of technological friction is present in the “wilful clunkiness” of wired headphones, which are enjoying a mini resurgence. Writing in High Snobiety, Jake Silbert points out that “in substituting a purposeful hindrance in place of streamlined ease, you're telling everyone that you think for yourself, craving challenge over convenience.”
At the more extreme end of intentional friction-adding, advocates for minimalist lifestyles suggest practising discomfort by choice, to help build resilience and adaptability. Examples include choosing to stand on buses and trains, even if free seats are available, and taking cold showers.
Friction pushes us, helps us test our limits and our capabilities, and tips us out of the smooth flow of software-optimised lives to feel something for a moment. That has value, and always will.
💻 My work
This spring I’ve had the pleasure of teaching on the Futures & Innovation unit on the BA Fashion Marketing course at London College of Fashion, including lecturing, seminars, tutorials and marking. It’s been a brilliant experience and I’d love to do more; if you’re an educator looking to bring futures thinking into your curriculum at any scale, please get in touch
📄 Research notes
I haven’t featured an exhibition here for a while. Take a Breath at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, sounds great. It examines “why we breathe, how we breathe and what we breathe - exploring themes of decolonisation, environmental racism, indigenous language, the impact of war on the environment and breath as meditation” (to March 2025)
Eminent AI researcher Kate Crawford’s new project Calculating Empires lays out the relationship between power and technology from 1500 onwards
Athens is responding to extreme heat by planting trees and installing cooling centres and waterstations across the city
Material changes can have a big impact. Drinks brand Baileys is piloting aluminium bottles, which will weigh 85g compared to glass bottles’ 454g, reducing the lifecycle carbon footprint of the packaging by 44%. The almost-inevitable caveat: the plastic thread on the neck of the bottle is not recyclable
EVTOLs are taking to the sky in Paris. France has approved the installation of a port for flying taxis on the River Seine, operated by Volocopter, in time for the Olympics
🔎 Interesting products: graduation shows special ✨
What Have We Done, What Will You Do? by Emma Griffiths (MA Industrial Design, Central Saint Martins) is an eco-anxiety emergency kit that contains a guidebook, ritual set and necklace-making supplies. The guidebook takes people on a journey of tasks and nature exposure and teaches resilience techniques tailored to times of collapse
Blood Pets by Wenjie Chen (MA Biodesign, Central Saint Martins) envisions a series of living biotherapies that use leeches to purify blood, improve circulation and rejuvenate organs. The ‘medicinal pets’ move to different parts of the body via a wearable
Fallen Furniture by Izzy Kelly (BA Product & Furniture Design, Kingston University) is a business case for an ethical company that uses local pre-fallen timber for furniture production, within a two-mile radius. Buyers know exactly where their timber was sourced via What3words, and simple, archetypal bench and table forms leave space for the uniqueness of each piece of timber to be the focal point of the furniture
🌾 Reading
“If citizenship is a matter of shared beliefs, then I believe in the democracy of species. If good citizens agree to uphold the laws of the nation, then I choose natural law, the law of reciprocity, of regeneration, of mutual flourishing.” Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and The Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Just like you I think friction is needed and is coming back ! Thanks Sarah for sharing your thoughts, always happy to read you 💫🙏