As AI becomes increasingly capable of anticipating our needs and making decisions on our behalf, designers and technologists need to ask a new question: what happens when technology becomes too seamless?
In the 1990s, US design studio IDEO built a reputation around the simple idea of human-centred design. The premise was straightforward. Put people at the heart of the design process and build products around how they think, behave and interact with the world around them.
As an industrial design student 20 years later, human-centred design was baked into the curriculum. We studied ergonomics, how people move and think, and anthropometrics, how human bodies vary in shape and size. The goal was to create products that felt intuitive and removed unnecessary friction from people’s lives.
In physical products, those constraints are tangible. A handle can be too large for a hand to hold. A chair can be too deep and a button can be too stiff to press.
In digital products, those clear constraints largely disappeared.
The language remained the same: intuitive, seamless, user-centric. But gradually those principles stopped serving people and started serving platforms. Success became measured in attention, engagement and time spent. Technology learned to track our movements, collect our data and anticipate our behaviour, all in the name of convenience.
Convenience, as legal scholar Tim Wu wrote in The Tyranny of Convenience, is one of the most underestimated forces shaping modern life. Over time, we’ve allowed it to influence almost everything we do.
Now AI is taking that philosophy to its logical conclusion.
For the first time, we’re building systems capable of constructing such detailed models of who we are that they can appear to know what we want before we do. Wearables monitor our heart rate and sleep, smartphones track our interests, and AI assistants analyse our conversations. Together, they create the possibility of environments that continuously adapt themselves to our needs.
Imagine arriving home after work. Your laundry has already been sorted. A personalised drink is waiting to replenish nutrients you didn’t know you were missing. The lighting adjusts to optimise your energy levels. A film is ready to watch. Dinner has already been ordered based on the conversations you’ve had throughout the day.
Magic, right?
Except you didn’t choose the drink. You didn’t decide what to watch. You didn’t think about what you felt like eating.
Something else did.
And it was easier.
But at what point did you stop participating in your own everyday life choices?
When did you stop choosing what you want, getting it wrong or being surprised by something unexpected?
This push towards a sort of tech utopia, where our personal AI relieves us of decision fatigue, is, ironically, also stripping away something which arguably is fundamentally what makes us human in the first place.
The Rise of Friction-Maxxing
That may be why “friction-maxxing” struck such a chord when it emerged earlier this year.
Coined by journalist Kathryn Jezer-Morton, the term describes the intentional choice to do things the harder way. Calling the restaurant instead of booking online. Navigating without a maps app. Taking a route you don’t know. Choosing discomfort over optimisation.
On the surface, it sounds irrational.
But it resonates because many people instinctively understand what is being lost.
When my child was young, I often found myself calling restaurants to ask if they had a highchair. The information was rarely available online. It felt inconvenient in an age where everything else happened through a screen.
Yet I also found myself looking forward to the meal more afterwards. I’d already connected with someone. The experience had begun before I’d even arrived.
In our pursuit of convenience, we’ve quietly removed many of the moments that create anticipation, connection and meaning.
Sociologist Hartmut Rosa describes this through the concept of resonance: the idea that meaningful relationships with the world emerge when something calls to us, we respond, and both sides are changed by the interaction.
Crucially, resonance requires a degree of unpredictability.
The frictionless smart home, optimised by algorithms and predictions, risks becoming resonance-proof.
Everything works perfectly.
Nothing surprises you.
Designing the Conditions, Not the Outcome
This creates a fascinating challenge for those of us building AI products.
The strength of AI is its ability to adapt. Every user can receive a unique experience. But that doesn’t mean every experience should be optimised to remove all effort.
Spotify Discover Weekly is a good example. At its best, it introduces listeners to music they might never have found on their own. But if every listening decision becomes a recommendation and every recommendation informs the next one, discovery gradually narrows. The unexpected becomes predictable.
Recently, while exploring the topic of family connection in the studio, we realised how uncomfortable we felt with the rise of grief-tech products that promise digital recreations of loved ones after death.
In response, we designed ‘Alight’.
Inspired by a traditional answerphone, it uses light as a gentle prompt to call someone you care about. Conversations can be recorded and revisited later, creating a searchable archive of real memories.
The real value doesn’t come from simulating a relationship. It comes from encouraging one.
The accidental moments. The unexpected stories. The conversations that go nowhere and everywhere. The things no AI could have predicted.
Designing for AI shouldn’t be about scripting meaningful experiences. It should be about creating the conditions in which they can happen.
Attention, Agency and the Next Generation of AI
As AI moves beyond software and becomes embedded within physical products, homes and everyday environments, designers have an opportunity to avoid repeating some of the mistakes of the last technology lifecycle.
When I think of the objects I value the most in my own home, I think about my record player and my projector. The record player because it demands attention. I choose the record, place the needle and enjoy the specific music as a deliberate act and choice.
The projector because it folds away and makes watching something a conscious decision and never a background activity.
Neither removes friction. Both create meaning.
As we design the next generation of AI products, we need to ask a different question.
Not: “How do people use things?” But: “What do things do to people?”
For AI developers, product teams and designers, that’s a significant shift. Not all friction is bad friction. Some of it creates agency. Some of it encourages reflection. Some of it gives people ownership over their decisions and experiences.
The challenge is learning to distinguish between friction that frustrates and friction that matters.
Putting the Human Back in Human-Centred AI
The future of AI doesn’t need to be a choice between innovation and humanity.
Imagine arriving home and putting a wash on because it takes less than two minutes, but also because someone once taught you to care for the things you own. The machine optimises water use in the background. An AI assistant reminds you that you planned to call your mum. During the conversation, she tells you a story about a holiday she took thirty years ago to Thailand. Later, you decide to cook Thai food and discover a shop you’ve never visited before on the hunt for ingredients.
Technology is still present throughout the experience. But it isn’t making every decision for you. It’s creating opportunities for connection, curiosity and discovery.
To me, that’s what human-centred AI looks like. Not technology that removes every decision, predicts every desire or optimises every moment, but technology that supports us while leaving room for surprise, agency and human connection.
The next challenge for AI isn’t making systems smarter.
It’s knowing which friction is worth keeping.
References
- Tim Wu, The Tyranny of Convenience, The New York Times, 2018.
- Kathryn Jezer-Morton, In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing, 2026.
- Hartmut Rosa, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, Polity Press.
