Our August 2022 essay is “Reimagining the Role of Friction in Experience Design” by Jonathan Ericson. He discusses the concept of friction in user experience design and notes that the typical design goal is to reduce friction; but there are contexts in which friction should be increased. Rather than reflexively striving to eliminate friction, he urges researchers and designers to intentionally design friction in accordance with human needs and goals.
In addition to the essay, this issue includes two research papers, one on UX design dimensions for future taxis and one that describes a UX training program for graduate students.
The first article is “Deriving UX Dimensions for Future Autonomous Taxi Interface Design,” by Madeline J. Hallewell, David R. Large, Catherine Harvey, Leah Briars, Jenna Evans, Madelaine Coffey, and Gary Burnett. In the anticipated likelihood of driverless taxis in the near future as part of everyday life in cities, the authors describe their user-design activities to develop an experience-design framework for autonomous taxi interfaces.
The second article is “Program Stakeholders’ Experience of a UX Graduate Training Program,” by Jin Kang and Audrey Girouard. Kang and Girouard describe research conducted with stakeholders of an independent UX training program called the Collaborative Learning of Usability Experiences (CLUE), and they analyze interviews with graduate students, alumni, industry/government partners, and faculty.
