Frictionless isn’t always better when it comes to banking

Words like seamless and frictionless seem to have become permanent fixtures of product releases and announcements pertaining to financial products.

But most UX designers and design ethics practitioners will say that friction is like any other tool in the designer’s toolkit.

It isn’t in of itself bad or good. Just like other tools like contrast and animations, it’s the implementation that matters. And the implementation of friction or the removal of it is a conscious choice in an environment where no choice is really value-neutral. When websites relegate the unsubscribe button to the bottom of an email and make it as imperceptible as possible, it is a design and business decision. The choice to push the “reject all cookies” options on a website behind multiple clicks and screens is a business decision as well.

So how does this discussion on choice architecture and friction pertain to financial services?