Coefficient of Friction in Shopping

The customer's experience of shopping for a product is quite an important aspect to consider while selling the product. Apple! Famous for many reasons provide one of the finest shopping experience. But this isn’t about Apple or the experience of shopping in their stores. It is about, David Pogue’s ideology to understand and utilize experience itself. How we can evolve our level of thinking from merely buying a product for its features or usability, to actually encourage simplicity and ease of buying and using a product. He explains this concept with a term called Friction, which can relate to the extent of involvement in obtaining the desired result. 

“Friction is a hassle. Steps. Process. And in this increasingly technified world, there is still a surprising amount of red tape—and few examples of push back. We stress about things like price, storage and processor speed, instead of beauty, elegance and low friction.” Writes David in his article 'Make Technology - and the World - Frictionless'

“Why, in this day and age, are we still typing in our address and credit-card details into Web forms, over and over again? Companies like Apple and Amazon have figured it out. Low friction means more sales. Apple has its app; Amazon has its 1-Click Buy button. You don’t have to enter any extra information. You see something you want, you click, and you’ve just bought it.”

He does add the point that low friction does not necessarily add to more sales. It is more of a behaviour that you try to encourage amongst people. As an example he explains a formula for predicting someone's likelihood to vote is something like PB + D > C, where P is the probability that your vote will make a difference, B is the benefit to you if your candidate wins, D is the gratification you get from voting, and C is friction—the hassle of registering to vote, then getting to the polling place, standing in line, and so on.

" Clearly, lowering the friction would increase turnout. Imagine if we could register and vote online—or vote by making a few taps in a phone app. Voter turnout would likely skyrocket. And that would make for a real democracy. (Fear of manipulation is supposedly the reason we’re not there yet. But we could get there if we really wanted to.)"

With such detail explanation he ends the article with an excellent advice to improve our perspective for shopping. 

“Next time you’re shopping for a digital camera, don’t ask how many megapixels it has. Ask how many steps it takes to turn on the manual focus. When you buy a laptop, don’t just care about its screen size; care about how many touch tones are required to get you to tech support. When you buy a phone, see how many taps it takes to e-mail a photo. And if you’re on the other side of the table—if you’re the vendor—don’t just figure out how to attract customers. Figure out how to eliminate the friction you present to them.”

Original article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=technologys-friction-problem