The rise of the cult of seamless: a short history of frictionless digital products

How did we end up here? Why is friction considered bad, and seamless experience considered good? The preference for seamless experiences can be traced through several key influences.

Hi all,

I’m writing a series about designing intentional friction to increase human agency. This is a history post: strap in, for this is a long one.

Seamless experiences didn’t just appear with apps and smartphones; the ideas that led to this have been in the air for more than a century. There are a few pioneers who always get mentioned when talking about modern workflows: Taylor, Ford, Taiichi Ohno, Eiji Toyoda. Modern industry made removing friction a virtue long before interaction designers picked it up, and what changed with computing was that the seamlessness moved from the factory floor to a promise of seamless everyday life.

Engineers and computer scientists of the mid-20th century began asking the same questions as the industrialists, but this time about thought itself: how do we remove the friction between human minds and the vast machinery of knowledge?