Despite all of our recent harping on the enshittified internet, it’s hard to argue that we are, in many regards, still in the midst of a digital golden age. Whether procuring dinner, buying a new swimsuit, applying for a job, writing an essay, finding a date, or hailing a taxi, many things have never in the history of humankind been this easy.
Since the dawn of the digital age, these painstakingly digitized experiences have been on a steady trajectory toward eliminating every last trace of friction. Now, with the advent of AI and AI agents, that project is close to completion.
UX design has marched in step with this project, mostly in good faith. In its principled pursuit of making things better for users, the discipline has zealously pursued usability by removing barriers, streamlining flows, and making interactions effortless. This focus has been good in many ways, particularly in industries like insurance, where simplifying dense policy information or streamlining the claims process can transform a stressful experience into one that feels approachable, transparent, and even reassuring for customers. But can the pursuit of frictionless ever go too far?
Maybe not everything should be so easy
While streamlining the process of booking a doctor appointment or choosing a seat on a flight is harmless enough (and generally helpful), there are other activies that maybe shouldn’t be so easy. Consider gambling, for example, which is deliberately hedged with rules, ID checks, and built-in delays — safeguards meant to keep risk in check. When gambling becomes digitized, as it has in recent years via online betting platforms, the same UX principles we use to streamline more benign activities are applied. Safeguards show up as friction, and so they’re stripped away; if not overtly pushing people toward riskier behavior, then certainly enabling it.
Of course there is also school work to be considered. It is and has always been about the intellectual effort, the friction inherent in grappling with a hard problem and learning something in the process. Yet generative AI and tools like ChatGPT risk replacing that effort entirely, undermining the point of the exercise. As one Columbia student recently admitted in a New York Magazine article on the topic, when it came to writing college essays: “I’d just dump the prompt into ChatGPT and hand in whatever it spat out.” And if the reporting on the subject is true, this student is far from the exception.
The point is that while lots of things can and should be made easier (in the digital world and beyond), in many areas of life, friction serves a purpose—even a user-centered purpose. Friction in UX design can be useful and even desirable (as Opal, the app that introduces friction into smartphone use, has proven). Friction slows us down when slowing down matters. It forces us to wrestle with challenges, learn something, or find satisfaction in the effort itself — whether that’s writing, making art, cooking, gardening, or even designing.
The Gen Z economist Kyla Scanlon has made this point sharply, reframing friction as a kind of energy:
“We have a world where friction gets automated out of experiences, aestheticized in curated lifestyles, and dumped onto underfunded infrastructure and overworked labor. The effort doesn’t disappear; it just moves.”
In other words: as digital friction vanishes, physical-world friction piles up—in broken infrastructure, strained systems, and exhausted workers.
So as UX designers, we need to ask: when we de-friction a digital experience, where does that friction go? And is seamlessness the only thing that makes an experience good? Certainly not. While usability should always remain a goal, friction in UX design can be used intentionally and meaningfully to better an experience: to safeguard and protect, to educate and inform, to enrich and deepen experiences. How can we design experiences that take these other values into account in the service of good design and ultimately of users?
Why friction in UX Design matters in insurance
This tension is especially relevant in the insurance industry, for which we are often designing. For decades, the industry has been derided as a dinosaur, bogged down by regulation, outdated systems, and endless inefficiencies. Much of that criticism is fair. But in the rush to digitize and “smooth out” every customer touchpoint, it’s worth asking: what gets lost? Because, unlike ordering groceries or subscribing to a newsletter, the stakes can be high when buying insurance.
Making insurance feel too easy can put customers at risk: leading them to buy coverage they don’t understand, or devaluing insurance itself, reducing it to something as throwaway as the gift wrap you add to an Amazon order.
In insurance, especially, ease alone can backfire. Customers need to feel informed, reassured, and confident in their choices. That sometimes means adding intentional friction, or even letting existing friction remain.
A little friction in UX design, thoughtfully applied to insurance experiences, can be a feature rather than a bug. Here’s how:
1. Friction builds trust through transparency
Like the click of a seatbelt before a drive, a pause in the process reassures customers that their safety is the priority. Explanations, disclosures, or comparison steps may feel like hurdles, but they can also build confidence and credibility.
Take this example: when a customer applies for renters insurance, the flow might require them to review a side-by-side breakdown of what’s covered versus what’s excluded — theft, fire, water damage on one side; floods, earthquakes, and certain high-value items on the other. The extra step adds a moment of friction, but it ensures the buyer clearly understands what they’re paying for. Instead of feeling tricked later, the customer feels informed and reassured that the company is being upfront.
2. Friction protects against “junk insurance”
Embedded coverage that shows up as a background checkbox risks becoming meaningless. And when design strips away meaningful steps, it can start to look less like transparency and more like trickery. We’ve seen in other industries how deceptive UI patterns can manipulate people into choices they don’t fully understand. Insurance has to do the opposite: use design to slow people down just enough to protect them from confusion or harm.
For instance, instead of pre-checking a box to add travel insurance at the end of a flight booking, a well-designed flow might pause to ask the customer a short set of questions about their trip: Are they traveling internationally? Do they have existing health coverage abroad? Do they want protection for cancellations or lost baggage? These extra clicks create friction, but they also force the buyer to think about is actually at stake and consider the risks. The result is less accidental add-on insurance and more confidence that the coverage purchased is intentional and relevant.
3. Friction reinforces value
Consider a high-end meal at a fine dining restaurant: the courses are carefully paced, the ingredients are carefully chosen, and the chef often tailors the experience to your preferences. It takes more time than fast food, but that’s the point: the effort signals that the meal is worth the money.
Insurance can work the same way. A few deliberate steps — eligibility questions, needs assessments, clear explanations — elevate it from a one-size-fits-all transaction to something that feels tailored, meaningful and important. In this light, thoughtful friction makes buying insurance feel less like grabbing a burger on the go and more like making a reservation at the perfect restaurant for an occasion.
4. Friction creates alignment between front-end and back-end
Frictionless automation can hide dysfunction. Imagine if a doctor quietly updated your health record with a concerning test result but never explained it. Insurance has its own version of this: imagine a drone photo silently triggering a premium hike. It’s already happening, and while this experience is frictionless, it also feels deceptive.
While sometimes creating friction, notifications, consent, and appeals processes keep insurers honest and customers informed.
5. Friction signals care
Not every transaction should be instant. Sometimes slowing a customer down is less about gathering more information and more about showing care. Friction can act like a hand on the shoulder, guiding a customer through an unfamiliar process. This is especially true when it comes to more personal or emotional insurance decitions.
Take buying life insurance, for example: a flow that pauses to ask, “Who depends on your income today?” or shows how different coverage amounts would protect their family isn’t just about data; it’s about reassurance. These small moments of friction remind customers they’re not making decisions alone. They signal that the insurer is walking alongside them, helping them weigh the options, and ultimately ensuring they feel cared for at every step.
Knowing when to use friction in UX design
When it comes to buying and servicing insurance, ease of use matters, and experiences fraught with friction can create frustration and undermine trust. But friction isn’t always a sign of inefficiency or dysfunction; sometimes it’s a sign of care. The role of UX isn’t to eradicate every obstacle, but to shape the right kind of experience, one appropriate to the task at hand. Sometimes that means speed and ease. Other times it means slowing down, adding reflection, or building trust. The challenge and opportunity for insurance is knowing when to remove friction and when to design it in
