Latest / The Feed & The Thread / The Feed & The Thread - July 28, 2026

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The Feed & The Thread - July 28, 2026 · The Feed & The Thread

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  Frictionless design is making our products forgettable. So we
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  should actually add resistance? Exactly, and we're breaking down
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  why meaningful friction beats smooth every time.
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  Welcome to The Feed and The Thread, brought to you by
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  Chicago Camps. Leadership By Design is on Thursday and
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  Friday, September 17 and 18 and tickets are available now! And
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  while you're at it, get caught up on UX fundamentals with five
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  minute UX at five em UX dot com. The Feed & The Thread is
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  available online at feed and thread dot com to submit your
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  feeds, or download our app for all the feeds and threads
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  delivered right to your pocket.
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  We chase frictionless interfaces, yet we often ship
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  forgettable ones. Today's Feed asks whether removing all
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  resistance actually deepens user connection, or just hollows it
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  out. Ida Persson at UX Design.cc challenges that dogma
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  in "From frictionless to meaningful". She argues that
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  struggle creates memory, citing the IKEA effect to show how
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  effort builds emotional weight. That rewrites the assumption
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  that low cognitive load is always the goal. Nick Babich at
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  UX Planet shows how "Claude Design can craft 3D objects"
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  expands beyond flat screens. The tool now crafts three-
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  dimensional objects, shifting prototyping from two-dimensional
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  mocks to spatial assets. This suggests a move toward more
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  immersive design workflows. Other articles today from UX
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  Design.cc on system seams and UX Planet on Claude Opus five.
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  Practitioners are asking how to prove value when the work itself
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  becomes harder to point to. Over on r/UXDesign, a designer
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  is weighing Figma against Penpot, specifically looking for
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  the disadvantages of switching to that open-source alternative.
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  This question signals a quiet shift away from SaaS
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  dependencies toward self-hosted tools. It's not just about
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  features anymore. It's about ownership. When we chase
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  frictionless interfaces, we often outsource our process to
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  platforms that don't care about our retention. Choosing a tool
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  that you host yourself adds technical friction, but it might
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  deepen your team's connection to the actual design assets rather
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  than just the cloud subscription. In r/hci, a
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  nineteen-year-old computer science student is seeking a
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  peer to discuss human-computer interaction, aiming for a
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  master's degree. The post emphasizes mutual respect and
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  serious engagement. It's a solitary desire for intellectual
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  companionship in a field that often feels isolated. We talk a
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  lot about user connection, but we rarely discuss practitioner
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  connection. If removing all resistance hollows out the
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  interface, maybe removing all friction from learning hollows
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  out the designer. You need that resistance, that debate, to form
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  a real point of view. Over on r/UXDesign, someone is
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  frustrated that their department of eighty designers is siloed
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  and viewed merely as aesthetic providers. They're looking at
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  Mauro Porcini's career to see how design leaders can prove
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  business value without just making things look pretty. This
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  is the tension between being a service provider and being a
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  problem solver. Frictionless design often means invisible
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  design. But if the work is too invisible, the business doesn't
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  see the value. You have to create enough strategic friction
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  to force the table to look at what you're actually solving.
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  In r/UXDesign, a senior designer with fifteen years of experience
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  is admitting the universal struggle of keeping their
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  portfolio updated. They call it the shoemaker without shoes
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  problem. It's ironic that we build better interfaces for
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  users than we do for our own careers. Updating a resume is a
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  friction-heavy task that we constantly avoid. But that
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  avoidance creates a disconnect between who you are now and how
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  the market sees you. You can't expect a seamless career
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  trajectory if you're maintaining a stale personal brand. Over on
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  r/hci, a product designer is comparing master's programs in
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  Germany, worrying about the long-term value of an HCI degree
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  amidst the rise of AI. They're asking if the credential still
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  matters when the tools are changing so fast. This ties back
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  to that first point about ownership. If you don't own your
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  process, or your degree, or your portfolio, you're just renting
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  your place in the industry. And rent always goes up. The common
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  thread today isn't about removing friction. It's about
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  realizing that some friction is actually the substance of your
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  professional identity.
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  Chicago Camps is hosting Leadership By Design on Thursday
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  & Friday, September 17 & 18. It's an online event, so you can
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  join from anywhere in the world! Tickets are free, thanks to the
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  generosity of the community! If it's within your budget, you can
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  purchase a general admission ticket for only twenty six
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  dollars - with limited early bird tickets at only fifteen
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  dollars. Get tickets now at Chicago Camps dot org.
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  That argument from Ida Persson about the IKEA effect is
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  reshaping how I view friction. She suggests that struggle
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  creates memory, which implies that our industry's obsession
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  with removing all resistance might actually be hollowing out
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  the user experience rather than deepening it. It's a bold claim
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  because we've spent a decade optimizing for speed. But
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  looking at that thread where the student is desperately seeking a
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  peer to debate HCI concepts, it feels like the same principle
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  applies to us. If we remove all friction from the learning
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  process, we might be hollowing out the designer too. That's an
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  interesting parallel. The student isn't just looking for
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  information; they're looking for resistance to form a real point
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  of view. It ties back to the MERSI website project, which
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  uses tactility to create a quiet, immersive environment.
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  Both examples suggest that meaningful connection requires a
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  bit of weight, whether it's in the interface or in the
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  intellectual formation of the practitioner. Exactly. We treat
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  friction as a bug to be patched, but sometimes it's the feature
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  that makes the interaction stick. If the industry keeps
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  pushing for zero cognitive load, we risk creating interfaces that
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  are forgettable and practitioners who are
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  interchangeable. We need to stop apologizing for the effort
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  required to understand something complex. So the shift isn't
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  about adding difficulty for its own sake, but about curating
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  which efforts build value. Right. The next standard for
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  quality won't be how fast a user can click, but how deeply they
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  engage with the problem before they do.
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  That's The Feed and The Thread for today. We'll catch you next
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  time!