Friction and Weak Links: Part 2
My friend Navin Kabra loves talking about the right amount of friction.
What is the right amount of friction?
Rumblers before a junction on a highway is a good example. You don't want traffic to come to a standstill, but you would certainly like it to slow down a fair bit. And this is important for both the folks on the road, and also folks inside the vehicle - everybody comes slightly more conscious of the world around them, and are likely to be jolted out of whatever reverie they were in.
That's the right amount of friction.
Adding that section separator is another example of friction. Even if you are just skimming through the article, you still do become aware that a new section has started, if only subliminally.
Adding a Heading Works Too
Again, as you probably noticed, the heading also has indicated that something out of the ordinary is happening. We can't predict a priori the extent to which these frictions will work on all readers, but it is a safe guess to say that all of you will notice it to some extent.
Too Little Friction, Too Much Friction
The internet, and all of the apps that work on top of it, have done a wonderful job of removing friction from the act of consuming information. It is the easiest thing in the world to move on to the next tweet, the next blog post, the next unread article and the next podcast. There is a ceaseless waterfall of information that doesn't just cascade across your screen of choice, it positively marauds across it.
My problem with the consumption stage is that it is, if anything, too easy.
The act of deliberately choosing which parts of which article (or blog post, or podcast episode, or video) to highlight and tag - that is not, alas, a frictionless process.
And it is not a frictionless process for two reasons. First, it disturbs the flow of consuming information. You have to stop the act of being in consumption mode, and switch to concretizing mode. Your workflow for this may be different depending on what you're consuming (audio, video or text), and how you're consuming it (sitting at your desk, out for a walk, driving your car, doing the dishes).
Switching out of consumption mode is hard, and switch back into it is equally hard. And so you have two choices - continue consuming, consequences of not highlighting me damned. Or, alternatively, stop consuming and switch to note-taking mode, consequences of not consuming be damned.
And if you're anything like me, you'll choose the first option.
What would be great would be a system that:
Knows when you have finished consuming a piece of information
Gives you an option at the end to automatically summarize the information in 3,5,7, 10 or 20 bullet point summaries, if you choose to do so
Adds a link to the article, and your choice of summary to your note-taking system of choice
Allows you to make a note about what all whatever you have consumed reminds you of
Suggests things it might remind you of, given that it already knows the kind of connections you make
How might such a system work in practice? Imagine that you reach the end of this particular blog post.
You get five buttons at the end: 3 5 7 10 20
Click on a button of your choice, and voila, the link to the content (in this case, this blog post) and the summary is now added to your note-taking system.
You can choose whether you'd like to read the summary right then and there, or later on (say at the end of the day, or a frequency of your choice), or both.
You can choose whether to add in notes about what this reminds you of right away, or later, or both.
And you can choose whether this system should proactively tell you about what it thinks this ought to be reminding you of right away, or later, or both.
What Might This Look Like in Practice?
This sounds complicated, but imagine the end of a blogpost, where a simple overlay pops up with the buttons I spoke about (3 5 7 10 20), and a small yellow bulb and a bridge, as two additional icons. The numbered buttons allow you to add the summary, and if you tap on the yellow bulb, you get to add a quick note (typed or voice) about what it reminds you of. If you tap on the bridge, you get the system's suggestions about what it thinks you ought to be reminded of.
I'm sure a good UX designer would make this infinitely better and much more compact (not to mention more pleasing to the eye), but you get the general idea.
In other words, reduce the friction while I am in the act of consuming information, but allow me at the same time to quickly add notes to stuff I find important.
The more I use the "Add a quick note" feature, the better the system gets at making suggestions over time. That is, it "learns" how I make connections, and becomes better and more proactive over time. I can imagine situations where it learns not just from my behavior, but from folks within the same demography, or role, or organization - but that's a rabbithole I'm choosing to not explore for now.
And Now For The Weak Links
This system should allow me to pause and take stock at an interval of my choosing. Maybe once a day, maybe twice a week (and for someone like me, even twice a day!).
These sessions are for concretizing and constructing, and here I am in search of friction. When I see the summaries I have collected thus far, I should be able to visualize the connections, or choose to give short quizzes on each item I have consumed, or even across different articles I have consumed.
If, for example, I have read an article about American Presidents and, say, Tacos (hehe), then I might be reminded of other articles about politics, or food, or both. Or maybe I am reminded of Mexican politics, who is to say? Whatever I say I have been reminded of, across all that I have consumed, I should be able to give a short quiz on all of those articles together.
It would be even better if these quizzes could have as backgrounds images of the places where I read the article (either taken from Google Photos, or from Google Maps), because I have this weird thing where I remember an article better if I can remember where I read it.
But the truly important bit is that the quiz shouldn't just be the article/podcast/video in question, it should be about the connections that I have made (or the connections the system suggested for me).
This (deliberately introduced) friction allows me to both concretize as well as construct. And of course, we can make use of spaced repetition here, allowing for questions that have been asked earlier to bubble up again, and this can be based on time of day, day of the week, events pulled in from my calendar, or even anniversaries of trips taken in the past.
That is, a system that knows where I have been, what photos I have taken, what information I have consumed (and when and where and how and why), what meetings I have been a part of (and will be in the near future), and how I take notes.
If such a system can:
reduce the friction while I consume information
increase it while I concretize said information
reduce it while I construct thoughts based on that information
... then I might well be able to get so much better at creating stuff that I can then share with the world.
There's still no guarantee that I will be more regular at writing blog posts, of course.
But I will have a much shorter list of excuses about why I don't write daily!